The Green Drift Page 19

  That’s what you do! ’ He drew a big, rasping breath. ‘It’ll be all right when they come,’ he added, in a half whisper.

  ‘The cars all went with the rest,’ Richard said. ‘I haven’t seen one. It would be worse to get there and be pushed back. They wouldn’t let us get near anyway. Lepers, God help us. Perhaps it will be all right when they come.’

  His body slacked off.

  ‘Don’t give in! ’ Jennifer said, her voice rising in panic. ‘Don’t give in, for God’s sake! We might get away. There’s always a chance! ’

  ‘If they don’t cut the juice, there’s no chance,’ he said. ‘But what’s the good, anyhow? It’s a monstrous storm of beings coming down on us. There’s no escaping it.’

  ‘Griswold’s mad,’ said Barbara, her voice shivering.

  ‘What the hell does that matter?’ Hayles shouted, hanging on both doorposts. ‘We’ll all be like him soon! They’re coming! If we’re mad it might not seem so bloody.’

  There was a sudden flash of light beyond the end of the lane. An engine roared in the night.

  ‘A car! ’ Richard gasped. ‘It was real! ’

  ‘Good God! ’ Hayles shouted, and backed into the dark shop.

  Porch kept his hold on Ellen and dragged her into the narrow nlley between the shop wall and the next. Barbara ran across the street into a porch. Jennifer ran for the shop door.

  Richard stood still, suddenly alone. The spiders had run under the skirting. There was silence in the street where the darkness jazzed with the fireflies.

  But in the distance was the sound of the car dragging on the dusty lane and the echoing of an iron voice coming nearer. Richard swallowed and looked up to the red scar.

  It was shortening. The gold spot was swelling, the beginning of a vast, slow dive in the vertical.

  Lights flashed across the deserted house on the hill, glared momentarily, then dipped beneath the hedges of the lane, racing towards the village.

  ‘Come out!’ Richard shouted insanely. ‘Show yourselves.’

  No one came to join him but Jennifer who came as far as the door, bewildered, struggling to understand. The iron voice roared in the echoing night. Lights sprayed the walls on the other side of the street. The echoes in the village shook the calling voice into a treble resonance. Richard could only hear his own name shouted in a muddle of iron sound.

  The headlights swung in and the street leapt into theatrical unreality.

  ‘Here! ’ Richard shouted. The wind was freezing on his face as he ran towards the car.

  The car stopped. It was a police brake. The door opened and the driver got out.

  ‘Got to collect the lot—seven! ’ he shouted. ‘Where are they? Do you know?’

  ‘What’s happened, then?’ Richard said, dragging Jennifer out of the shop doorway. ‘Aren’t we contaminated?’

  ‘Seems the contamination is electrical not radioactive,’ said the driver breathlessly. ‘Where are the others?’ He turned and saw Barbara crouching in the porch. ‘Come on, girl! What’s the matter with you? It’s the police from Endover, not Mars! ’

  Richard shoved Jennifer towards the car, and turned into the shop again. He was in time to be charged aside by Hayles as the journalist rushed out.

  ‘Let me get in! Let me get in! ’ Hayles sobbed and half screamed. ‘Oh Mother! Jesus Christ! Let me get ini ’ He shoved Jennifer aside to reach the car.

  The driver went towards the porch. Barbara jumped out of it, twisted, ducked past him and ran down the narrow alley between one house and the inn.

  ‘Hey! ’ the driver said, starting off. ‘Come back! We’ve got to beat it! ’

  ‘Barbara!’ Richard shouted. He ran after the policeman. ‘It’s all right! Come back here! Barbara!’

  At the car Jennifer cried out in sudden rage.

  ‘Let her go, then! She’s mad! Let her go! ’

  The police sergeant got out of the front seat.

  ‘You get in there and shut up! ’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get you lot out and about two minutes to do it! ’

  The telephone spoke to him from the dash.

  ‘Direct fall started overhead. Evacuate.’

  ‘Haven’t got them yet,’ the sergeant bellowed. ‘Hang on! They’re a bit crazy.’

  Barbara came up against a shut gate and turned, gasping. The policeman halted, Richard behind her.

  ‘I couldn’t help it!’ she panted. ‘I’m glad! He’s better where he is. He was no use to me or her. He was a bastard. He would have got away with it. He would have got away—! ’

  ‘Never mind that!’ the policeman got her. ‘Come on out now! ’

  They got her back up the alley, struggling, still talking, half crying. Richard remembered the horror of Wednesday night.

  ‘Get the others,’ the policeman said, looking back at him.

  Overhead the long scar was further north. The detached glaring star of light was growing brighter.

  Richard ran along the shop-front.

  ‘Porch! Ellen! What’s the matter with you? Come out! ’

  He got hold of Ellen. Porch tried to hold her, but let her go. Crying like a child, Ellen was pushed into the car. Porch stood watching, feet apart, then he turned and began to march stonily down the street away from the car, back towards the deserted house.

  ‘Porch! Come back. Porch! ’ Richard yelled. ‘You’ll be eaten if you go there! You’ll—’

  ‘It’s an order!’ Porch yelled without turning back. He marched on. ‘It’ll be all right when they come. It’s an order! ’

  The driver stared at the vanishing figure, then shouted. The radio telephone called urgent instructions.

  ‘Have to let him go! ’ the sergeant shouted from inside. ‘The order is get out! Quick! How many are there?’

  ‘Five,’ Richard said. ‘Griswold’s at the house—the police house—’

  ‘Get in there! ’ the driver said, savagely. He shoved Richard headfirst into the car back and slammed the door. Then he got in the driving seat and the sergeant joined him.

  ‘It’s coming! ’ Richard shouted, scrambling up. ‘It’s like it was! Like I saw it! Look!’

  He pointed up through the long windows. High in the vast sky there hung coruscating chandeliers of green light, spinning slowly as they came down. They lit the arch of the heavens with a strange green glow, and the ugly scar of red faded against the downcoming brilliance.

  The car started and stopped again.

  ‘Keep going.’ Richard said. ‘Give me the phone! ’

  ‘But the man Griswold—?’ the sergeant said.

  ‘It’s no good. He won’t come. Give me the phone!’

  ‘He’s supposed to be in charge—’

  The phone was speaking in the sergeant’s hand. Richard reached over the seat back and snatched it.

  ‘Listen, this is urgent. All electricity supply must be cut off in this area. Is that understood? All supply must be cut off now. I have spoken to Griswold. He needs medical attention. Don’t communicate with him now. Please pass on these messages. Most urgent. Most urgent! ’

  The voice answered.

  ‘There is a fall now.’

  ‘We can see it, almost overhead. Cut the supply now! Cut the supply! Don’t contact Griswold. He will confirm later. Griswold will confirm later.’

  ‘Now look here,’ the sergeant shouted, ‘he’s in there and we’ve got to—’ He opened the door.

  Griswold fired from the window. The bullet hit the car roof and went whining away into the dark.

  ‘Look out! ’ the driver snapped. ‘He’s firing at us!

  A second shot exploded the blue winking light on the roof.

  ‘He’s crazy, I tell you! ’ Richard said. ‘Get out of range. He can use that thing.’

  The driver accelerated down the road out of sight of the police house, then stopped.

  ‘Electricity Supply won’t co-operate,’ the operator’s voice came over the air. ‘Need Griswold to confirm.’

  R
ichard swallowed.

  ‘This is Griswold,’ he was husky, imitating. ‘Confirm cut supply.’ The sergeant stared, then remembered the rifle shots.

  The chandeliers spun glittering in the sky, vast pools of scattered specks of green began to multiply.

  ‘Confirmed,’ the operator said. ‘Out.’

  ‘They’re pretty,’ said Barbara, and giggled.

  ‘Looks like a kind of warfare,’ the sergeant said, staring.

  ‘Don’t we get out of here?’ the driver said.

  ‘Leave Griswold,’ Richard said. ‘Yes, get out.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of it,’ the sergeant admitted. ‘But I was told to get ’em all.’

  ‘You can’t get Porch, or Griswold,’ said Richard.

  ‘We’re going back,’ the sergeant said. ‘We’ll get Porch anyway. I just don’t fancy passing that gun again. He can shoot.’ He nodded. ‘Swing her round, Jim.’

  The driver looked up at the green fire in the sky. He knew there were more directly over his head that lie could not see.

  ‘Blast Porch,’ he said, and turned the car.

  ‘Look at the wires! The grid wires!’ the sergeant said.

  Across the dark countryside the long loops of the supply lines began glowing like green lines of fire.

  “What’s that then?’ the driver said, automatically decelerating.

  Suddenly, the glow began to die. The current was oil.

  The car stopped. They heard a man screaming from the darkness ahead, screams of rage and madness.

  ‘You can get him now!’ said Jennifer. ‘Look! He’s in the road!’

  .‘Head him off the police house!’ Richard said. ‘Don’t let him get the phone! Look! It’s succeeding already. The lines are going out! If you can get him the things won’t come.’

  At any other time the driver would have hesitated, but he was himself in the middle of the nightmare, and he had been fired al by this man. He directed the car at the man in the middle of the road. The man still had the rifle, but he began to run back towards the police house.

  The driver accelerated and turned in to head him off. The man seemed to vanish for a moment, then bowled spinning along the side of the long vehicle. The brake stopped and the driver jumped out. Griswold was on his hands and knees in the road. Richard got out, and saw the man’s face savage in the red lights of the car tail.

  All around the green specks of light seemed to be thinning. Richard stopped and looked up into the high sky. It seemed that the chandeliers had slopped in their floating descent. It was almost as if they were beginning to rise away into the great heights of the sky again, now that the thin network of glowing life had died against the velvet blackness of the land below.

  THE END