He'd been scared, scared so that he lay in bed each night telling himself what a bloody fool he was but he didn't care because this sort of artificial existence was no more than ticking the years off, waiting for retirement. And when you were retired all you had left was another period of waiting . . . waiting to die.
It had worked out. The house had been sold and they had found a seven-acre spread and a tumbledown cottage in the hills and had even had a thousand left over after the mortgage was cleared. But without Jackie he wouldn't have made it even then; she had her own ideas about farming, ideas which made them 'cranks' in the eyes of the sparse local community.
'Look at it this way,' she told him one night after he had spent the day propping up the sagging roof timbers in the old stone cottage. 'If we go in for conventional stock farming we'll be lucky to make a thousand a year with a few cattle and sheep, and that's providing we don't have any mishaps which we probably will have because we're only amateurs, after all.'
Jon closed his eyes, waited for it. But, after all, she had been right about digging up those lawns.
'We'll start up an organic farm,' she smiled. 'It'll be hard work but there's a genuine need for the produce. Carrots for cancer sufferers; under alternative treatment they have to drink three pints of organic carrot juice a day, plus goats' milk yoghurt, so we'll keep goats. And garlic, there's a big demand for garlic but most of it is imported. There's lots of other lines we can experiment with too. We won't make a fortune but we'll make a living and most important of all we'll have our freedom.'
As usual Jackie had been right. It had been hard work, very hard work, and still was but they had made it. Contrary to popular local expectations, they had succeeded in growing their crops on a windswept slope 1,000 feet above sea-ievel, they had built up their own goat herd and even had a billy for stud. They still had the old Citroen Dyane but had managed to buy a battered old canvas-topped Land Rover for farm work as well. That part of it had worked out, but somewhere along the way things had gone wrong for Jon and Jackie; they found themselves drifting apart. These last few days Jon had tried to put his finger on the cause but it had eluded him. In a way he felt guilty about having Sylvia in here with him, occupying Jackie's rightful place in a tiny haven of safety. It was as though he had traded his wife's life for that of his mistress. If Sylvia took it into her head to walk out of here and go on up there, get herself all burned up or whatever, then that was her lookout. No, it wasn't, he'd do his utmost to stop her because if she went then he would be left alone and he could not stand that.
'How much longer do we have to stay down here?' She broke the long silence, asked a question which he had been asking himself these last couple of days and had not had the courage to take responsibility for the answer.
'Another few days, I guess.' He stared down at the bare concrete floor and wished that he had saved that old piece of coconut matting out of the kitchen instead of burning it. Jackie's motto was that you never got rid of anything. 'That freak gale and rainstorm last night will have helped to disperse whatever was in the atmosphere.'
'God!' Sylvia covered her face with her hands and for a moment he thought that she was on the verge of hysteria. That's all I bloody need! But when she looked up again that expression of panic had passed. 'It is a nuclear attack.* She spoke calmly. 'It's got to be, hasn't it?'
'No.' He pursed his lips, shook his head slowly, a physics master aware that he was going to have difficulty getting a new theory over to an intelligent and questioning class. 'It's not a nuclear attack. That much was made plain in the early radio bulletins before they cut out/
Try the radio again.'
'I have. Nothing at all. Plus the fact the batteries are beginning to run low. I should've stocked some spares. Next time I will.' He laughed at his own joke, made it sound more unfunny than it was.
Then what do you think's happened, Jon?'
'It can only be one thing.' He watched her steadily, wondered if he should put it into words, decided that there really wasn't any point in keeping anything back. 'I reckon it can only be one thing. Germ warfare^
He saw her pale; it had to be a trick of the uncertain oil lighting because she had been deathly white for days.
'How do you know?' She asked the question because she felt she was expected to say something.
'I don't, I'm only guessing. The early reports hinted at a radioactive fall-out but they didn't know where it was coming from. There hadn't been any fireball, any direct attack, nothing picked up on the detection devices. All that was happening was that people were coming out in terrible skin rashes and their minds were going blank. It spread faster than the plague and I guess that when the newsmen caught it that was the end of all means of communication. We're OK because a shelter like this has a far better chance against micro-organisms than it does against radiation.'
'But how . . . how would an enemy attack us with these germs? Surely there would have been some kind of warning?'
'I guess it's the most deadly weapon of all, the one which we're most vulnerable to,' Jon Quinn went on. 'As you say, no bang, no warning. I suppose the enemy synchronise their agents to release the micro-organisms into the atmosphere, say at half a dozen strategic points in the western part of Britain so that the prevailing winds will spread the germs. You can't see 'em, hear 'em or smell 'em and they've got you before you realise it. It could be the same story in the States and in Western Europe. At the moment we've no means of finding out. But you can bet there's a few other survivors besides us, total annihilation would be an impossibility even for the most ruthless enemy. At the moment we've no idea what the effects of these diabolical bugs are. Early reports seem to suggest that they affect the skin and the brain but nobody seemed to be dying as a direct result of it! At least, not right away.'
'It's horrible.' Sylvia shuddered.
True, but think of the advantages from the enemy's point of view. Buildings are left intact and when it's ah over the enemy just arrives and takes over. They could have all the slave labour they need, thousands of zombies at their disposal. And the rest go to the gas chambers.'
'We'd be better off dead,' she groaned.
'Well we're alive and we've got to make the most of it,' he grinned, hoped that he sounded optimistic. 'As I said, that storm came from the west and with luck it will have cleared the micro-organisms. We've got all the food we need so we're lucky. Tomorrow I'm going to take a walk outside, see what's happened to the livestock.'
'I'll come with you,' she said, a sudden fear of being left alone; suppose something happened to Jon and he didn't come back.
'No,' he replied. 'If we both go then there's a double risk of contamination or whatever. I shan't go far, just a quick look around the holding. And if everything's OK then maybe we'll be able to make some plans to explore further afield.'
'All right.' She lapsed into another silence and her thoughts returned to Eric, her husband. For the first time for years she found herself wishing they were together, which was damned silly because they had got used to spending their lives apart. As a feedstuffs rep covering most of Wales he was away for days at a time and she knew bloody well he'd got other women. It was a rep's perk. So she got her own back by having Jon; she just needed screwing, every woman did, and when your man was away from home week after week you took steps to get it, just like he did. You never admitted it to each other but you both suspected—knew. Life went on that way, you didn't expect it to change. And then without warning something totally unexpected like this cropped up and you had your lover for keeps and your husband, if he was lucky, had one of his fancy women. A kind of enforced wife-swap. But right now she'd have swapped for Eric, because of all the men she had over the years he was the one she had never really got to know. Now it looked like it was too late.
So she was going to stick to Jon Quinn because she needed somebody to protect her. Somebody to screw her. And he needed her because, like Eric, Jackie was out there in a dying land.
She would have to accept the situation and so would Jon. Il would be like a second marriage for both of them.
JACKIE QUINN had a sensation like waking from a long deep sleep, refreshed but still having to fight to bring back hazy recollections which did their best to elude her like marshland jack-o'-lanterns.
She was indoors; Pauline's mother's house. She recognised the lounge even though all the furniture was gone and the paper was peeling off the walls, exposing spreading patches of damp which even the hot dry weather had not been successful in eradicating.
Outside it was getting dark, the sky turning saffron, a single twinkling star seeming to mock her through the dirt-streaked window-pane. She crossed to the window, stood looking out across the overgrown garden towards the roadside hedge, a thick untended length of hawthorn and lilac. The streetlamps came on, one flickering, dimming, burning low due to some electrical fault probably. She shuddered. It was eerie, artificial lighting still operating in a world where nobody was ^capable of any kind of maintenance. Unless, of course, like herself lucidity came back in flashes. But it would not be enough. Sooner or later the lighting would pack up and all amenities would come to a standstill. No medical service. Disease would follow. One way or another, if you didn't die now you would later. It was the beginning of the end.
Suddenly she stiffened, narrowed her eyes and stared out into the orange-tinted dusk. Something had attracted her attention. She saw a shape, then another, movements that rustled the scorched vegetation in the garden; branches swaying, twigs snapping.
Oh God! Unmistakable silhouettes in the half-light, grotesque naked shapes that had to be human because they
could not have been anything else, stooping, shambling forms, men and women, crouched amongst the bushes, conversing by means of gesticulations and grunts,
Jackie stifled a scream, backed away from the window, an urge to flee but there was nowhere to go because she was trapped in this place, a prisoner between the four walls of a terraced house, outside a bunch of naked savages that belonged to a primitive age.
She dropped on to her hands and knees, crawled across the room. They must not see her, must not be aware that she was hiding in here; the frail doors and windows would not keep them out. Her head began to ache again but it was too dark inside here to know whether her vision was starting to tunnel again.
Out into the hall, listening. Chattering. The noise reminded her of those jungle movies her father used to take her to on wet Saturday afternoons when she was a child. Incessant grunts and squeaks. And she knew only too well that the sounds were real, that no way were they the figments of her tortured brain.
She found herself in a rear room, vaguely recognised it as once having been the dining-room. A few years ago Pauline's mother had persuaded Jackie to stay to supper and they had eaten in here. The ceiling bulged, there was a gaping hole where water from the bathroom directly above had deluged through, probably a burst pipe during one of the recent severe winters. A rusted electric fire hung precariously to the wall in one corner; a broken concrete floor, a two-foot deep hole in the centre, further evidence of where the surveyors had dug down in an attempt to locate the fault in the foundations. And a telephone perched on me window-sill!
Jackie stared at the dust-coated instrument, experienced a sudden surge of hope. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and it was still there; afraid in case it was a mirage, her brain taunting her with false hopes. But it was real, dusty but real.
She raised herself up to the level of the sill, peeped over it. Those awful sub-human creatures were in the rear garden, too, a group of them squatting in a circle amidst the tall seedy grass of the larger lawn, a cross-legged gathering as though they represented some kind of council seated in judgement, grunting and nodding to one another, their rough bodies stark naked.
They're awful, inhuman.
You're one of them, too!
But I can reason, think.
But for how long? Your periods of civilised behaviour are becoming shorter and shorter!
Her stomach churned. Suddenly that telephone on the ledge by her hand was shrinking, growing smaller and smaller, framing itself in a reducing circle, around which was impenetrable blackness spotted with red! Now, before it's too late!
She grabbed the receiver, almost dropped it. Rehearsing her words in case they suddenly evaporated from a brain that was starting to go blank. I'm in number one, First Terrace, Jon. They're outside, camped in the garden. Primitive savages and they'll break in and kill me if you don't come quick. Please believe me, Jon, it's true, I swear it is. Come quickly. Bring the shotgun. Oh Jon, please save me from these hideous creatures!
Starting to dial ~ 0 ... 5 ... 8 ... 8 ...
Something was wrong, her failing sense of reasoning screamed it at her, a realisation that modern technology had ceased to function. No dialling tone, just a total silence. When the house had been emptied the telephone had been disconnected!
Sheer primordial rage engulfed her. She gripped the plastic-coated object with both hands, snapped it in half so easily that it might have been rotten. One half fell, bounced on the bare floor, the other swung on its flex, mocking her. She caught it, pulled, tore it from its connection, then grabbed the squat remainder, not knowing what it was, not understanding, only that it was an alien that had to be destroyed. Smashing it against the wall, fragmenting it, kicking it, crushing it beneath her feet. Killing it!