The small ward stank of vomit and diarrhoea. The curtains were still closed, and the six boys aged from nine to fourteen, lay in various postures on the beds, their pyjamas undone, their bodies glistening with sweat.
Montgomery, the youngest, was crying softly to himself.' He didn't like boarding schools anyway, and they were a thousand times worse when one was ill. This last half-hour his body had been stiffening from the base of the spine upwards, a creeping numbness that alleviated his earlier agony. He stared up at the ceiling, mentally tracing the cracks in the plaster, going all round them and back again, just for something to do. He hoped that the doctor might send him home. That would have made the suffering worthwhile.
Ursin-Davies sweated profusely. He always sweated anyway, on account of his size. Rolls of fat were visible to the others through his open pyjama jacket. He hated this school, but most of all he loathed sport. What use were football and cricket to a fellow with brains? Yet they did not seem to appreciate his academic qualities. The fact that he came top of 5B in almost every subject did not appear to compensate for his failure at everything physical. Master, prefects and fellow pupils ridiculed him, went out of their way to make his life a misery. He hated every one of them, and particularly Bryce-Janson.
Ursin-Davies turned his head and looked across at the head boy. BJ was groaning in agony, grinding his teeth.
Good! If his own pain was anything to go by, Ursin-Davies decided, then BJ was going through hell. It was almost worth putting up with to watch the swine suffer.
Ursin-Davies draped an arm over the side of the bed. His fingers brushed against something metallic, and with some difficulty he managed to grasp it and slowly draw it upwards. It was a knife, an ordinary item of cutlery, the blade matted with congealed gravy. It smelled bad, and he wrinkled his nose. Some earlier patient had obviously dropped it, and it had never been recovered. He grinned to himself. That just went to prove that old 'Bossy' wasn't as thorough as she made out. She kidded 'em all, the idle old bitch. Even Jackson, Christ, how he hated Jackson. But not as much as he despised Bryce-Janson. The head-boy was a legal bully. He could take it out of you, and justify his actions. He could think up all sorts of sadistic punishments and get away with them. His word always counted with the Head against anybody else's.
This sudden new surge of hatred was easing the fat boy's pain. He remembered his recent clash with BJ. Dirty shoes and a crumpled tie at the Saint's Day service the other day had earned him a session of detention. Not just ordinary detention like others got, though. Oh, no. BJ knew that that would be no real punishment for him. He'd taken him down to the gym and put him through the lot; the vaulting horse, the horizontal bar, the climbing ropes, ending up with twenty minutes' physical jerks whilst the head boy sat on his arse and smirked.
Ursin-Davies had thought that he might have suffered a heart-attack after that lot. He had coughed and wheezed all night, and then he'd been selected to represent his house on a cross-country run the next day. They knew he couldn't bloody well run. It was all BJ's doing. He had engineered it. The bastard had been waiting at the finishing-point when Ursin had staggered in, a full twenty minutes after everybody else.
'I'll make an athlete of you if it kills you.' the head boy had announced in a loud voice, and all the spectators had broken into peals of laughter. You were expected to laugh like hell at any of BJ's sick jokes. 'Better a dead athlete than a fat scholar.'
'If it kills you'. Ursin-Davies winced at the memory of that jibe, and felt the cold steel of the knife in his sweaty palm.
'I say, Bryce-Janson,' a thirteen-year-old boy called out, shaking a younger colleague in the next bed, 'I think ... I can't make Burlington hear. He's gone all stiff like . . . like he's got polio or something.'
Bryce-Janson sat up hurriedly. He grunted, but somehow managed to slide off the bed and pad across to the boy who had attracted his attention.
'Let me see.' He pulled the other aside. 'Hey, Burlington. Listen to me.' He shook the inert form roughly. 'This is Bryce-Janson. Answer me! D'you hear me? If you're fooling, I'll report you to the Head.'
Ursin-Davies eased himself up on one elbow with difficulty. The nine-year-old was wailing, and those clustered around the silent boy's bed were beginning to panic. Bryce-Janson was trying to cover up his own fear by using his authority.
The bitterness which had been building up inside Ursin-Davies came to the boil. He gripped the handle of the knife. The back of his most hated, enemy was towards him, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of this before. It was all too easy, and no more than the bastard deserved.
A cauldron of hatred seethed inside Ursin-Davies. He forced his knife-arm back and upwards. The muscles were stiff and unyielding at first, but sheer determination defeated the semi-paralytic tendons. It just needed one supreme effort.
He brought the knife down with every ounce of his thirteen stone behind it. It took the head boy between the shoulders, the blade buckling but sinking in up to the hilt with the weight of the blow, twisting and tearing as blood gushed out of the jagged wound.
Bryce-Janson screamed, a strangled, unnatural sound that died away in a hiss of spittle. He sank to his knees, clutching at the sheets and pulling them to the floor with him. Boys stared in horror, disbelief on their faces. Ursin wrenched the knife free and held it up, blood dripping on to the floor. He tried to laugh, but no sound came. Just a baring of the teeth, lips drawn back, spittle frothing, bubbling, bursting. Then came brief realisation, momentary sanity amidst the madness, as his mouth opened with shock.
He gripped the knife again, exerting unwilling muscles, struggling to turn the bloody blade so that it pointed inwards, forcing it up towards his own jowls. Staccato movements, an inch at a time, beads of sweat rolling down his face with the strain.
'No ... no ... Fatty, no!' nine-year-old Montgomery screamed, the only one to realise the full implication of Ursin-Davies's actions.
This time the blade's entry was achieved more easily. It slid into the soft fat without the hindrance of bone, once again going hi up to the hilt, severing the jugular vein, until blood spouted like an oil-geyser, jetting on to beds and boys alike.
The door opened, and Matron entered, a short, middle-aged doctor at her heels.
'These are the boys, doctor,' she was saying, 4it really is most puzzling... and... '
She broke off, saw the tottering boy, the knife embedded in his throat, the fountain of blood, and fell forward unconscious.
The sun beat down relentlessly on the squat buildings which comprised the Biological Research Centre on Can-nock Chase, so that as early as ten o'clock in the morning the heat in Haynes's office was stifling. The air-conditioning laboured under the strain, and the four people in the room knew that by midday it would be virtually ineffective. They all recalled the freak summer of 1976, but this one threatened to break all records. Farmers were forecasting disastrous potato crops again. Fire-brigades were at full stretch in an attempt to combat heath and forestry fires. Yet, suddenly, all these had become of minor importance.
Copies of every daily newspaper for the past week lay spread out on the desk. The headlines bore a similarity as the Fleet Street prophets of doom revelled in the latest sensations. 'BATS FROM HELL SPREAD KILLER DISEASE', 'SCHOOL QUARANTINE AS PLAGUE AND MADNESS STRIKE', 'DEATH VIRUS ESCAPES FROM RESEARCH CENTRE', and so on. The accounts varied. Some followed the truth religiously, others exaggerated. The man in the street would believe that which he chose to believe. In all, fear would predominate.
Haynes regarded Brian Newman, Professor Rickers and Susan Wylie steadily. He fidgeted with his spectacles, and chewed his lower lip.
'It seems you were right, Brian.' He averted his eyes as he spoke. He wasn't accustomed to making apologies, nor to admitting that he was wrong. 'I owe you an apology.'
'Thanks.' Newman said. He could have made it tougher for his chief, but he had no wish to do so. The situation now was far too serious for either of them to indulge in petty jealousies.
Rickers shuffled his feet and mumbled. 'I still can't believe it. It's just not scientifically possible.'
'Well, it's happened, and that's that.' Haynes spoke sharply. 'And right now we've got to do something about putting it right. How have your tests gone, Brian? Is an antidote possible?'
'Not at the moment.' Newman shook his head gravely. 'I injected a fresh lot of bats, but they died in just the same way. I tried taking germs from those which appeared to be immune and injecting the virus into the sufferers. They died. It had no effect.'
'Hell!' Haynes lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. 'The Press are really gunning for us now. So are our own boys in London. We're the villains of the piece.'
'I am,' Professor Newman corrected him. 'It was my fault that the bats escaped, I was careless enough to knock the cage over.' He noticed Susan blush and start to say something, but his frown silenced her. 'It's got to come out, anyway, and I'm prepared to take full responsibility.' 'Let's get a few facts together first,' Haynes said, 'working from the information we already have. By now a large percentage—it's impossible to quote figures—of bats are carrying the virus. Those which they come into contact with either catch it, and die within a very short time, or else they become carriers themselves. Hence the disease will spread at an alarming rate. It is reasonable to assume, in the light of recent information, that the bats were responsible for the death of the Williams' family and that they caused the horses to bolt on to the road. Therefore the Wooden Stables were their first home after their escape. Then they vanished. Was it because they were disturbed? Let us assume so. Then for some time they disappeared altogether, presumably to some quiet place. The main .bunch, anyway. They chose the upper regions of Lichfield Cathedral's main spire. They were disturbed again, this time by a firm of contractors working on the spire. They came into contact with schoolboys and a headmaster. The headmaster and six boys died horribly from this meningitis type disease within three days. But nobody else. Consequently we can assume, at this point, that humans do not carry the disease. They only catch it directly from the bats. Therefore, the bats are the real menace. If you keep out of their way you're safe, unless of course you meet up with someone in the 'mad' stage of the disease. Williams killed his wife, and that schoolboy murdered the head boy. But can the virus be carried by animals or birds, rats, mice, starlings, all the scavengers, for instance?'
That we don't know yet,' Professor Newman answered. The greatest danger could be from rats and mice, but at the moment there are no reports to substantiate this.'
'But the question everybody is asking,' Haynes said slowly, pausing to draw on his cigarette, 'Is just where have the bats gone now? Nobody has set eyes on them since the episode in the cathedral.'
'We can only guess,' Brian Newman said. The time between the Wooden Stables affair and the one in the cathedral we can presume is the period they took to adjust to their new way of life, hiding away from humans. Then they were disturbed by those contractors. They have now retired somewhere to breed. The period of gestation is seven weeks. That takes us up to July. The young are not capable of leading an independent life for two months after birth. By September, we could be in the midst of the most terrible spread of the disease imaginable. It could be nationwide instead of just confined to the Midlands. Our only hope is to find the main colony and destroy them. Now!'
'A task equivalent to looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack,' Rickers said. 'Where the hell do we start?'
'There is no longer any point in attempting to conceal the facts from the public,' Newman continued. The more they are kept informed, the better. We must enlist their help. Anybody who sees bats must report it at once, and we must have teams of pest-control experts standing by to move into action. Whilst the bats remain in rural areas there is still hope, but once they converge on the towns and cities—well, it doesn't bear thinking about!'
Haynes said, 'Oh, God!'
'We play ball with the Press, then?' Rickers pulled a wry face.
'We must,' Haynes replied. 'Give them the full facts, don't leave them to draw their own conclusions. There's already been too much exaggeration and surmising. I'm attending a Press conference this afternoon, and I shall attempt to educate them on bats and mutated viruses. Now, Brian, what's the chance of coming up with an antidote? Is it hopeless?'
'We'll keep trying,' Professor Newman told him. There isn't much else I can do at this stage. However, to be perfectly honest, I don't hold out much hope.'
Ken Tyler had been gamekeeper in charge of the land around the ancient site of Castle Ring, on the edge of Cannock Chase, for five years. His duties varied between rearing pheasants for his employers, who rented the shooting rights over the surrounding two thousand acres, controlling the vermin, assisting in the culling of the deer herds, and spending his weekends patrolling in his Land-68
Rover to ensure that none of the picnickers who converged on the Chase at fine weekends either lit fires or deposited litter.
A small, wiry man, he wore the traditional suit of plus-fours in all weathers, including freak heat-waves. It was his uniform, his symbol 'of authority. People knew to whom they were talking when he stopped them. In his own estimation he commanded the same respect as that of a police officer. His word Was law on the Chase. If Ken Tyler instructed anyone to quit the land, they were expected to obey without question.
For the past fortnight he had rarely enjoyed more than four hours' sleep in any one night. Fires were breaking out all over the Chase. At this very moment two brigades, aided by troops and voluntary helpers, were attempting to contain thirty acres of blazing conifer thickets. There was no chance of putting the fire out. They had to be content to widen the fire-breaks and hopefully prevent it from spreading to an adjacent five hundred acres of larch trees.
Ken Tyler knew all about the deadly bats. His attitude was one of 'I-told-you-so'. Hadn't he forecast something like this happening from the very first day when the building of the Biological Research Centre had commenced next to the German Cemetery? Yet he still had his routine duties to attend to. He had listened to the repeat broadcast of the previous evening's plea to the public. 'Find the bats,' they said, 'before they give birth hi July.'
Tyler laughed. Some chance. Today he was going to leave the fire-fighters to their own devices. Beyond the golf-course there were five acres of rhododendron bushes. The previous winter they had provided roosting for some tens of thousands of migratory starlings. As a result the shrubs had become white with the birds' droppings, and beneath them there was a good six inches of foul-smelling excreta. Now a fire up there would have been beneficial, cleared the area. But no, the silly buggers who came here at weekends preferred to drop their cigarette ends and broken bottles in valuable growing timber.