Squelch (19 page)

‘Sorry!’ She twisted away, ducking under his arm. ‘That’s the last thing I need. I’m involved with someone else, Jeff.’

‘I wondered why you were looking so delicious,’ he said lightly. ‘Then I’ll wait. Who knows?’

‘I do – so don’t bother!’

Before he could reply, the phone rang again. His face darkened as he listened. He glanced towards her, as though implying that the call concerned her too.

‘Bloody hell!’ he swore softly as the person at the other end went on. ‘Of course… Yes, I’m sure. What’s the name of the road again?’

He wrote it down on a pad, asked for directions, then rang off.

‘Lingford – a primary school. I’m afraid there are a hell of a lot of casualties. The children were outside for playtime when the attack happened. Moths first, then caterpillars.’ He began putting on a close-fitting zippered jacket as he spoke. ‘Normal emergency services are already there, but they’re asking for people experienced in handling caterpillars. I said we’d both be along. D’you mind?’

‘Of course I’ll help.’

Outside, the rain started pouring down as though all the taps had been turned on at once.

During the next few days the attacks multiplied and spread, yet few were as horrifying as the scene they found at that school. The children – none of them older than seven or eight – lay strewn over the hard playground and nearby grass, their blood diluted to a deathlike pink by the heavy rain. Some moaned and writhed in pain; some shrieked for their mothers; many were as pale and still as waxworks. Among them, their teachers had also been struck down, probably having been attacked as they tried to help.

Everywhere Ginny looked she saw green caterpillars, much longer and fatter than that pathetic little lizard, feasting on their helpless victims.

They did what they could. Ginny again concentrated on removing and killing caterpillars before the children were taken for first-aid treatment and then transported to hospital. How many she treated, she had no idea. The sweat ran down her face; her goggles misted up; she longed for each child to be the last, yet more were brought. Eighty altogether had been marked present on the school register; forty-three died before anything could be done for them. Of the rest, only seven were still alive the following morning.

Ginny went to the hospital to visit them. Passing an open door she caught a glimpse of Dr Sanderson sitting at his desk, his frameless glasses on the blotter before him as he wiped his eyes. His son was among those who hadn’t survived, Bernie told her later.

By that time the authorities were thoroughly alarmed. The attacks were too numerous to be regarded as merely isolated incidents which would not recur. They extended now across the whole of Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Emergency evacuation plans were instituted for everyone who wanted to get away, particularly families with children, though many preferred to stay put. Their arguments were various: it might never happen to them; they lived in a village which had never seen a caterpillar or moth; or – the most convincing of the lot – they’d be just as much at risk wherever they moved.

In Bernie’s living room Ginny cleared one wall of pictures and covered it with Ordnance Survey maps. A special mobile unit had been set up of people trained to handle the caterpillars, with herself as area leader. Every night the maps told the same story: the menace was spreading even farther.

Attacks were reported with increasing frequency from the leafy suburbs of Greater London. Occasional casualties occurred as far west as Reading, including a gardener discovered dead in the grounds of Windsor
Castle. Moths were sighted, though no one hurt, at Pershore in Worcestershire.

Back in Sussex, at Gatwick Airport a major air disaster was only narrowly averted as a jumbo jet coming in to land skidded over thousands of caterpillars on the runway. Passengers were imprisoned on board the plane for more than six hours before it was judged safe enough to allow them to disembark. Among the ground staff the casualty rate was so high that the airport had to remain closed.

Reaction in the press and Parliament was vociferous. If only words alone could defeat the caterpillars, Ginny thought more than once. Government action was demanded, yet it was patently obvious that the Cabinet had not the slightest idea what to do. The tabloids carried blockbuster headlines such as – at their most sober – MANEATING CATERPILLARS HIT SCHOOL. One distinguished itself with FOREIGN CATTIES EAT OUR KIDS, and demanded a tightening of quarantine laws. Meanwhile,
The Times
reported how the caterpillar plague had also spread across northern France and was threatening Paris.

As for television – her own trade, she remembered wryly, though all that now seemed a thousand light years away – at first the news crews merely added a fresh twist to the emergency services’ job, though when a cameraman was tragically killed they became more cautious. They also tried an in-depth documentary followed by a studio discussion, roping her in as an expert, no less, but it came up with no solutions. It was after some location filming for that programme that she had dropped in at the cottage and found a postal packet waiting for her. Somehow the post office had managed to deliver it despite the general chaos caused by the caterpillars, and the fact that their own postman was among those killed at the Spring Fête.

Opening the packet, she found it contained the manuscript of her proposal for that television drama series. The idea which had seemed so wonderful at the time! A covering letter from the agent commented that it might be rather difficult to place at the present time.

Ginny tossed it on to the little round table, but missed and it fell on the floor. She left it there and went back to Bernie’s house.

They saw very little of each other during those days, she and Bernie, except at night in that wide double bed. Any feelings of guilt towards Lesley had long since died. At last she understood what it must have been like in wartime. The normal conventions just didn’t apply: how could they when night after night she’d come back splashed with blood after yet another encounter with caterpillars? She didn’t even think of it any more.

‘I have squatters’ rights!’ she stated firmly on the one occasion when Bernie tentatively raised the subject. He’d just been speaking to Lesley on the phone and had come into the bedroom, his face troubled, to find her waiting for him. ‘Oh Bernie, let’s just live for today. What else can we do? When this thing with the caterpillars is over I’ll have to go away, you know that.’

In fact, it felt more like camping in the house than living in it. Neither knew when the other would be at home. Bernie attempted to keep up his normal consulting sessions, but there was such a demand for medics, he was also out for long hours at Lingford Hospital. When he did get back, invariably late, he was usually ravenously hungry and hardly human until he’d eaten. She kept the fridge stocked up with food they could cook quickly. First one home started the meal, and good stuff too, not convenience foods. Oddly, she found she no longer felt an antipathy to red meat. As for drink, he insisted on only the best claret and ordered it by the case, joking grimly
that – who could tell? – they might both be dead by the time the bill was sent.

The day Jeff rang about the lizard experiment Ginny had already been out twice on emergency calls. For the first she’d arrived too late: a twenty-year-old mother with her baby had taken a short cut to the clinic along a woodland path, despite all warnings. Both dead. The second had been in Lingford in a car park behind the supermarket, a typical double attack with the moths first blinding the victims, leaving them helpless against the caterpillars. What made it even more disgusting, they now knew that if no rescuers arrived in time, the moths would return to hover over the corpses. The proboscis would uncurl and hang dabbling in the wounds, drinking up the plasma. On this occasion they came across another example of it – a young assistant manager lying dead among the shopping trolleys. No one had known he was there.

She got back to the house worn out, hot, sick of the whole mess, only to be greeted by the phone ringing the moment she was inside the door. She picked up the receiver and yelled at it through her helmet: ‘Hang on till I’m undressed!’ Her mobile unit had been equipped with Army protective suits which were completely secure against caterpillars but a bastard to get on and off. At last she managed to free the upper half of her body. She grabbed the phone. ‘Yes?’

What met her ears was a chuckle, followed by some sexist joke about ‘can’t wait for videophones’.

‘Jeff, I’m in no mood!’ she snapped. ‘What is it?’

‘You’ve been to the supermarket?’ he guessed right away. ‘I heard about it. Sorry, Ginny, I’ve obviously caught you at a bad moment. Look, it’s about tomorrow. Can you come to London? I’ve arranged a demonstration of what lizards can do – your idea, Ginny! A couple of
Ministry people will be there. I’d welcome your moral support. More than welcome it – I desperately need it if we’re to convince them.’

‘Convince them of what?’

‘These aren’t your tiny lizards. They’re two foot long and they chew up caterpillars like they were cocktail sausages. We tried them out today.’

‘Where?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘I’ve a client who supplies zoos. Didn’t I mention him? I must have done. He’s got me into trouble often enough. You must remember the famous chimpanzee case when half of them were found dead on landing at Heathrow? Not my fault, I was only the bloody pilot, yet tell the press that! They really put me in the stocks. Anyway, he’s the man with the lizards. Keen to help, as well.’

‘You think it may be the answer?’

‘It’s worth trying isn’t it? At least it might jolt the Government away from pesticide spraying. Oh, I know it’s my bread-and-butter, but on this scale it’s mad.’

At eight o’clock they met in the car park behind Lingford Station. To be sure of a seat they took first-class tickets but – blaming caterpillars – British Rail ran a reduced service and they passed the journey standing squashed in the corridor. Two girls near them were talking about a new attack at Oxted during the night; one declared from now on she was going to stay in London where it was safer.

Yet both were dressed in ordinary clothes, Ginny marvelled; as though they were immune from the moths. She herself wore a close-fitting safari costume, with her head and face covered by an improvised Iranian chador, plus sun goggles to protect her eyes. A scattering of other passengers were similarly covered, perhaps a third of them in all. Jeff had equipped himself with a sort of balaclava helmet which made him look like a medieval hangman, and he crowned it with a soft felt hat.

The demonstration was to take place in a rented drill hall near Bryanston Square. An area in the centre of the hall was boxed off. Two lizards were already on display there, drowsing under the heat from the high-powered lamps arranged on stands around them. It was obviously intended to video the event, using three cameramen who were busy setting up their equipment.

A small cheerful man bustled forward to greet them, holding out a muscular hand. Jeff introduced him as Andrew Rossiter, responsible for organising the occasion. The two people from the Ministry had already arrived, it seemed. The woman, in a dark costume, seemed rather tense and did not smile even when shaking hands. The man was fidgety and obviously bothered by the heat. His grey suit had seen better days.

‘Right, we’re all here now!’ Rossiter called out when the introductions were over. He clapped his hands to ensure the attention of the video crew as well. ‘This is a private experiment. No press; no outsiders. It’ll happen once only, so keep your eyes open everybody, specially the cameramen. No rehearsal, no second chances – right? Now Fred here has ten caterpillars in his box – the big kind that have been causing all the trouble. When I give the word, he’s going to empty the box into the confined area where you see the lizards.’

They were a kind of monitor lizard, Ginny had learned, roughly two feet long and not yet fully grown. Their tails tapered until at the tip they were no thicker than a washing line, while their dark, speckled skin had a desiccated look about it.

To one side of the boxed-in area Fred stood waiting, clad in full protective gear and clutching an old biscuit tin in his arms. Rossiter checked that the cameramen were ready, then gave the signal. Fred removed the lid and checked the underside. On discovering a long, curling, green caterpillar clinging to it, he tossed it towards the
lizards. It landed with a clatter.

Neither lizard moved.

Slowly the caterpillar began to explore its surroundings.

Fred calmly picked the remaining caterpillars out of the tin one by one and dropped them into the enclosure. Counting them as he did so, Ginny guessed. He wouldn’t want to leave any unaccounted for.

Suddenly one of the lizards – without apparently moving – caught the fattest of the caterpillars and swallowed it. It was so quick, Ginny could not be sure she’d actually seen it. She watched more closely, next time just glimpsing the forked tongue as it shot out to seize another.

The second lizard ran forward a few paces, then stopped. In quick succession it took three caterpillars. There was no way they could have escaped.

Within three or four minutes every caterpillar had been gulped down.

‘Right! That’s it –
cut
!’ Rossiter shouted. ‘They ate all ten, did they, Fred?’

‘Gobbled them up like they hadn’t been fed for a week,’ came Fred’s muffled voice from inside the rubber shield he wore over his face.

‘A wonder they don’t get indigestion,’ the woman civil servant murmured to her colleague. ‘How long d’you think they live inside those lizards?’

‘A few seconds is my guess,’ Rossiter told her confidently. ‘Once those digestive juices get working, bob’s your uncle! Like to see one of the recordings? Let’s have one in slow motion.’

They watched all three recordings. It was obvious to Ginny that the civil servants were impressed, though the woman worried about how dangerous to humans the lizards themselves might be.

‘There’s a place in Nigeria called Bonny where they
used to think monitor lizards were sacred,’ Jeff attempted to calm her fears. ‘A hundred years ago, or more, this was. The travellers who went there said they were lying around all over the place – in the doorways, in the road, in the houses themselves. They didn’t harm anyone, it seems.’