12

“It’s a beautiful day,” said Wilson, peering up at the cloudless blue sky.

“Keep your eyes on the bloody road,” growled Slocock.

They’d been traveling for over half an hour now and even though Slocock intended doing most, if not all, of the driving he thought it would be wise if Wilson knew the basics of handling the Stalwart. He’d even instructed Wilson on how to operate the guns, despite his insistence that he could never bring himself to use them.

They were heading down the A449 towards Worcester in order to avoid the chaos that was apparently surrounding Birmingham and Coventry. North of Worcester they would try and get onto the M5, if it was clear, and proceed toward Gloucester, then across on the A40 and M40 to London, making a wide detour around Oxford as well.

Everything looked deceptively normal, apart from the lack of traffic on the road. So far their worst moments had come during the first few miles on the other side of the barricade. They had seen the first of the bodies almost immediately. They were everywhere; lying across the road; hanging half out of their bullet-­riddled cars; huddled together in groups beside the road.

At first Slocock tried to avoid running over them. But it was impossible, so he stopped trying. Wilson shuddered every time he felt the tires go over something.

The bodies nearest the wire were all badly charred.

“Flamethrowers,” said Slocock. “To kill the fungus. A fucking lot of good it does.”

But so far Wilson hadn’t seen a sign of the fungus on any of the bodies they’d passed.

A half-­mile past the barrier, they entered the “dead zone,” as Slocock called it. It was a total wasteland in which nothing lived. Parts of it were blackened and burned; other parts were covered in a strange white powder. At one point they saw a plane flying low across the ground to their east, leaving a trail of yellow dust behind it. Later they saw, in the distance, a jet dropping napalm.

They passed several burned-­out vehicles, their occupants charred husks with rictus grins, their teeth showing white against their blackened flesh.

On these occasions Wilson was glad Kimberley wasn’t sitting up front with them. The motion of the truck made her feel even sicker and she’d gone to lie on one of the bunks even before they’d reached the barrier.

Both men felt uneasy as they drove through the “dead zone.” They knew that the Air Force had been informed of their crossing, but this was no guarantee that some pilot might not decide to attack them, either for the sheer hell of it or because he hadn’t received the message about them.

Slocock pushed his foot down. But speed was dangerous on the battered road surface, and there were several sections where the road disappeared completely—obliterated by massive bomb craters. Slocock was obliged to slow down and drive off the road around them.

Finally they saw green ahead of them and knew they were almost out of the man-­made wilderness.

On the other side of the zone they passed a large group of disconsolate-­looking people sitting beside a number of parked cars. They’d obviously decided not to risk trying to cross the zone, or perhaps had heard from fleeing survivors what was waiting for them even if they got through.

Most of them just stared apathetically at the speeding Stalwart; a few looked puzzled at the fact it was traveling in the wrong direction, and a few raised their fists angrily at this symbol of the now-­hated military. None of them, Wilson saw, displayed any external sign of fungal infection.

When the road ahead seemed clear and undamaged, Slocock suggested, or rather ordered, that Wilson take a turn behind the wheel.

Wilson drove for about 10 minutes and was almost beginning to enjoy himself, absurd as that seemed in the circumstances.

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Slocock suddenly. “Pull up and I’ll take over. We’re getting near Kidderminster.”

As Wilson crawled over Slocock, he decided to check on Kimberley. He was tempted to go through the heavy hatch that separated the driver’s cabin from the rear compartment, but undoing the seals was a difficult business so he flipped the intercom switch instead. “Hi, Kimberley! How are you doing?”

There was a long pause before she answered, rather irritably, “I was asleep.”

“Oh.” He glanced at Slocock and saw the expected sneer. “Sorry. Are you feeling any better?”

“No. Where are we?”

He told her they were approaching Kidderminster. She said she was going back to sleep and not to wake her unless something important happened. He switched off the intercom with a sigh.

They rode on in silence for a while. Then Wilson pointed at the bottle of whiskey resting upright against Slocock’s crotch like a glass phallus. “Mind if I have a drink?”

“Piss off,” said Slocock.

Wilson wondered if he was joking.

“Does that mean no?”

“Look mate, I’ve only got another four bottles left.”

“That’s plenty.”

“Not the way I drink. And who knows how long it’s going to be before I get my hands on any more. So I’m sure as hell not wasting any of it on you.”

“You don’t like me very much, do you?”

Slocock laughed. “You intellectuals are real sharp. Yeah, you’re right. I don’t like you. My job is to make sure you stay alive long enough to do your job. After that, well, we’ll see.”

Wilson realized, with a mild shock, that Slocock was making some kind of threat. And yet he was surprised to note that it didn’t particularly disturb him. There were too many other things to worry about.

“Well, as Flannery would say in a situation like this, ‘Up yours, boyo.’ ”

Slocock grunted. “Who the fuck’s Flannery?”

“An old friend of mine.”

“Sounds like a real wit. But whoever he is he’s too far away to do you any good.”

“You’re wrong there. He’s closer than you think,” said Wilson and smiled.

They made a wide detour around Kidderminster just to be safe even though the town appeared deserted. Slocock sent the Stalwart off the road, through a fence and across the fields.

Wilson winced when the vehicle crushed the fence under its tires. “Aren’t you afraid we might get a flat? I noticed we’re not carrying a spare.”

“They’re puncture-­proof. The tubes are honey-­combed with lots of separate cells inflated with nitrogen.”

They got back on the A449 without any difficulty and were heading south toward Worcester when they encountered a group of nine people coming along the road. Five men, two women, and two young children. Wilson expected Slocock to speed by them as he had the other group, but to his surprise the Stalwart began to slow down.

“Why are you stopping?”

“Take a closer look at them.”

As the truck came to a halt about 20 yards from the group Wilson saw what Slocock was talking about.

They were victims of the fungus.

Compared with Dr. Bruce Carter on the video they seemed scarcely affected, but it was there nonetheless. They all appeared to be subject to a particularly dark blue five o’clock shadow. The women and children too. And the same blue coloring was on their hands as well.

Wilson felt his flesh crawl.

The group had come to a halt and were staring silently at the vehicle. They projected a sense of hopeless despair.

“Can’t we do anything at all for them?” Wilson asked Slocock.

“Yeah, we could shoot the poor bastards.”

Wilson didn’t take him seriously until he reached up and pulled down one of the folding gun-­control units from the ceiling of the cabin.

“No!” cried Wilson, grabbing his arm. “Don’t! Let them live!”

“Why? They’re finished anyway. If they get through the dead zone they’ll die on Buxton’s barrier. Be doing them a favor to put them out of their misery right now.”

“And I say let them be!” cried Wilson, his voice rising to a shout.

Slocock shrugged and said, “Okay, don’t get excited.” He started the truck moving again. “Your trouble, mate, is that you’re too squeamish. But you won’t be for long.”

As Slocock drove past the group Wilson got a closer look at the blue mold covering their faces and hands. He avoided looking at their eyes.

They stood motionless as the truck went by. Not much more than two weeks ago, Wilson realized, these had been normal, healthy people. But now, thanks to one mistake made in a laboratory in distant London, their world had been turned upside down and destroyed almost overnight. And he too was doomed . . .

Later, as they got nearer to Worcester, Wilson began to notice streaks of color that were alien to a British summer landscape. Bright orange, purple, blue and red . . . they were not the color of flowers; the orange was brighter than marigolds and seemed to glow unhealthily, and the purple suggested something that was rotting rather than living. Worse were the large patches of gray. On one occasion they passed an entire field of grayness. Whatever the crop was—either wheat or barley—it was covered with a thick coating of gray fuzz.

“Well, we’re in the land of the magic mushroom for sure now,” said Slocock and took another drink from his bottle.

The sight made Wilson aware that the fungus attacked other living things apart from people. Crops and livestock right across England were being destroyed, which meant there would be a tremendous food shortage in the months ahead. Those who survived the fungus would most probably die of starvation.

Ahead of them, where Worcester lay, they saw columns of smoke rising into the sky. “Looks as if someone’s torched the place,” said Slocock. Then, a short distance further along, he brought the truck to a halt and snatched up a pair of powerful binoculars.

“What is it?” asked Wilson. He could see some moving dots in the distance but couldn’t make them out.

“Army convoy. Four trucks. Two tanks in the lead. New ‘Challenger’ tanks. Must be planning to try and break through the barrier. And they have a good chance of succeeding with those babies. They carry Chobham armor.”

“Are you going to make contact with them? They might be able to give us information about conditions between here and London.”

“They’re just as likely to blow us to small pieces. I’m going to give them as wide a berth as possible.” Again he drove the Stalwart off the road and into a field. “This is going to slow us up but I don’t want to take chances at this stage of the game.”

As the vehicle bounced over the rough ground the intercom buzzed. Wilson pressed the switch and heard Kimberley ask worriedly what was happening.

“Nothing. Just a little detour. Go back to bed,” he answered.

“I just fell out of bed. It’s like being in a barrel going over Niagara Falls back here. I’m coming through.”

“Shit,” muttered Slocock.

Wilson helped her open the small, circular hatch and then assisted her through it. She came feet first and he supported her legs until she was all the way through. She landed on the seat between them with a thump. “Thanks,” she said. She smelled of sweat but it was a smell Wilson didn’t mind. And he saw she was looking much better. Still pale, but more like her old self.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for all three of us to be up front at once,” growled Slocock. “If the cabin gets holed or we break a window, we all get exposed.”

“And if that happened what good would it do having me sealed off in that tin can?” said Kimberley. “I’d be helpless.”

“But still pure and untouched, Doctor,” said Slocock, giving her a suggestive grin. “And there’d be a lot you could do. Like climb into one of the suits and bring the other two to us. They wouldn’t do us any good, of course, but at least we could keep our contamination away from you.”

Wilson tapped the thick glass of the narrow windshield with his knuckle and said worriedly, “I thought you said this was special armored glass, bullet-­proof and all that.”

“It is. Doesn’t mean it’ll stop everything though.”

Kimberley was peering round at the passing scenery. “Where the hell are we?”

“According to the map this is Fernhill Heath. I’m cutting across it toward the M5,” said Slocock.

“We saw an army convoy coming toward us,” explained Wilson. “And the sergeant thought it would be a good idea to avoid them.”

Kimberley said, “Well, don’t look now, but isn’t that another bunch of soldiers right in front of us?”

“Shit, she’s right!” cried Slocock, slowing down.

Wilson looked and saw a line of armed men appearing out of a row of trees ahead of them. He hadn’t spotted them earlier because they were wearing camouflage. Several of them were waving as they approached.

Slocock stopped the truck and sat there drumming his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. “I don’t like this. There are over 30 of them and some are packing anti-­tank weapons. They could take us out no trouble.”

“Why should they want to?” asked Wilson. “They’re army, and this is an army vehicle. They’re not to know we’re from outside.”

“Maybe,” said Slocock edgily.

The main body of men came to a stop some 50 feet from the Stalwart, but four of them kept coming.

As they came closer Wilson experienced a sudden frisson. What he had thought was camouflage paint on their uniforms, faces and hands was, in fact, fungus. They weren’t wearing any uniforms. Instead their bodies were coated in a tortoise-­shell pattern of green, brown, black and yellow patches of mold.

“Good God,” said Kimberley softly.

The four men, waving as they came, were now less than 20 feet away. One of them was shouting something, but as the cabin was airtight they couldn’t make out what he was saying. When Slocock shook his head to show he didn’t understand the man then pantomined that they should come out of the truck. He appeared to be grinning but the coloring on his face made it hard to tell.

Slocock muttered, “Balls to that,” and shook his head again.

The four men promptly dropped to the ground and aimed their weapons. At the same moment the row of men behind them started firing. There were several sharp pinging noises as bullets struck the Stalwart’s armor plating and, to Wilson’s horror, two white smears appeared on the windshield. He ducked down on his seat, expecting the glass to shatter at any second.

Slocock quickly pulled down one of the gun controls and pressed the red firing button. On the cabin roof the GEC minigun began to make a sound like a sewing machine.

Spurts of soil were kicked up around the four nearest men. Suddenly all four of them were writhing on the ground as the minigun hosed them with high velocity bullets.

“Get the other gun firing, quickly!” yelled Slocock.

Unwillingly, Wilson reached up and pulled down the control unit for the big 7.62mm machine gun. The unit was like a smaller version of a submarine periscope. It had two handles on either side. Rotating them up or down controlled the gun’s elevation and turning the whole unit made the turret swivel correspondingly. There was even an eyepiece linked to a sight on the gun by flexible fiber optics.

Wilson looked through the eyepiece and got a close-­up view of part of the ragged line of men shooting at them.

“Fire, you asshole, fire!” Slocock bellowed. “Before they start using their heavy stuff on us!”

Slocock was now directing the stream of fire from the highspeed minigun at the other men. Two of them immediately fell but bullets were still hitting the track at an alarming rate. They made a sound like a rain of large hailstones.

Wilson had his thumb on the red firing button but couldn’t bring himself to press it. Then he heard the minigun stop.

“Christ, I’m out of ammo! Shoot, damn you, Wilson!”

But he still couldn’t press the button.

The next thing Wilson knew he’d been shoved roughly aside as Slocock leaned over Kimberley and snatched the gun control away from him.

Then the big machine gun opened up.

In the distance Wilson saw the bodies of several of the mold-­covered men jerk and twist as the bullets slammed into them. The others started to retreat back toward the row of trees.

Slocock kept firing, spraying bullets back and forth along the fleeing line of men. More of them fell. Soon none of them were on their feet. Several lay writhing with agony on the ground, while a few were trying to drag themselves toward the cover of the trees.

Slocock kept firing.

Wilson turned to tell him to stop but saw the expression on his face and said nothing.

Even when all the bodies were motionless Slocock kept shooting. He didn’t stop until the gun ran out of ammunition.

Wilson knew now why Slocock had volunteered for the mission.