James Herbert - ‘48

Some of the Blackshirts were still slumped in wooden chairs, their ‘donors’ lying beside them; others lay curled up on the soaking floor, their hands curled into claws, mouths open as if in silent screams, as if the infusion of alien blood had sent their bodies into paroxysms of agony. I wanted to scream at them for their reckless stupidity, for the useless barbarity of it all. Why hadn’t they at least waited, tried the transfusions one at a time so that when the first or second failed, they’d give it up? I guess I was underestimating their desperation – what the hell did they have to lose anyway? – as well as the damage already done to their brains and their unfailing belief in their leader. But the only pity I felt was for the victims; I felt nothing at all for the parasites.

I stepped inside and stood on the small platform overlooking the charnel house, ignoring its stink as I searched among the contorted shapes; unfortunately, several were face down, or on their sides with their backs to me, and others were half-hidden in the alcoves. To be sure that Hubble and Muriel were with them I had to go down there for a closer inspection.

As I went into that nasty hell-hole I began to realize there were not enough corpses here to account for all the Blackshirts and the people outside the Savoy, and that puzzled me. And the women and children – where were they? S’far as I could tell, there were no women here, and definitely no kids, yet two nights ago there’d been a whole bunch of them. I figured there were about twenty bodies that I could see, and Hubble’s army alone must’ve amounted to triple that number, despite their losses in the air raid on the hotel and those I’d killed personally. I reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped over outstretched limbs, avoiding the worst of the blood lake, working my way along the alcoves, peering past the battered cannons into the dark corners, looking for more bodies, hoping to find some live ones.

I must’ve been concentrating too damned hard, because he was almost on me before I heard the first sound.

I hadn’t forgotten about the man I’d followed into this place, my mind had just been distracted, is all. It was the splashing of his boots through the blood that caused me to wheel around in his direction. He must’ve been waiting inside an opening at the far end of the chamber, watching me all the time, and now he was coming at me in a rush, a mediaeval pike held out before him, its nasty-looking metal point aimed at my gut. In that instant I realized it wasn’t a Blackshirt uniform he was wearing, but the navy blue day-duty tunic of a Yeoman Warder. His long coat was dusty, torn in places, the red braiding frayed, missing in places, and his unkempt hair hung in loose tangles over his crazyman eyes, spittle glistening in his long, matted beard. Close as this, I could see two things about those wild eyes: they were leaking blood, and they were filled with a malevolent hatred that was just for me. Jesus, they almost rooted me to the spot, but my reflexes kicked in.

I stepped towards him instead of backing away, turning my body to lessen the target area. There was no time to shoot him (besides, I didn’t want to alert any others who might be lurking in this place) so I looped the Sten gun’s sling over the pike’s metal tip as it skimmed past me, just inches from my stomach. The sling caught on the red and gold silk tassel between the point and wooden staff and I yanked the weapon towards me, twisting away from the demented warden, using the pole as a lever to knock him off balance. He fell to his knees as I completed the turn and he yelped like the crazy he was as I drove my left fist into the back of his neck. He went down hard, his face smacking against the wet floor. It’d been a smart manoeuvre on my part, but it worked chiefly because of the man’s own sluggishness; he had the sickness in him, same as the Blackshirts.

I pounced on him, my knee against his spine, the pikestaff still caught up in the gun’s sling. I dug the fingers of my free hand into his matted hair and jerked his head up, then smashed it back down against the flagstone. He gave a small gurgling kind of scream, then lay motionless. He wasn’t out though; a low moaning came from him. I was about to repeat the process, send him on his way for good – sure, I knew it wasn’t his fault, his brain was as diseased as his blood, but I’d spent too long at war with his kind and there was no sympathy left – but I thought of the victims around us, innocents who’d been murdered because they were different, had something the bad guys wanted for themselves. And I remembered there might be others still alive, but waiting to die. I lifted his head again.

‘Where are they?’ I hissed close to his ear.

He wasn’t so mad that he didn’t know I’d crack his blood-drenched face against the floor again if I didn’t get an answer. Through bruised lips and cracked teeth he managed to say: ‘They…they took them.’

‘Took them where?’ I deliberately pushed my anger, allowing it to overcome my own revulsion at what I was doing. Tightening my grip in his hair, I tugged his head up another couple of inches. He got the message and mumbled something so fast I couldn’t catch it.

I pulled his head back even further so that I could look into those terrible eyes. I winced at the leaking blood and the burst veins in his cheeks. The fingers of his hands spread out before him were blackened and swollen, smelling of gangrene. I wanted to choke.

‘Where?’ I spat out through clenched teeth.

I guess he didn’t like the wildness in my own eyes, because his diction suddenly improved. ‘They…they needed…God’s help.’

I stared at him.

‘Sir Max…Sir Max said God…’

His words trailed off in a whining moan, the saliva that drooled from his cracked lips turning pinkish as it flowed, becoming a deeper red by the time it reached the floor. His body began to convulse beneath me, gently at first, a trembling that became a shaking, and then a violent thrashing. He began to cry out, then to scream, and I had no choice, I had to stifle the sounds, stop him arousing others who could be anywhere inside the keep.

This time I put all my strength into smashing his head against the bloodied flagstone and the sickening thud it made was a hundred times worse than the soft groan that came from him. His body went limp and his head lolled sideways; on his bloody face was an expression of contentment, as if he were glad to be off somewhere else. At least, that’s what I told myself to ease my conscience. I didn’t know if he was dead – his body wasn’t even twitching – but I guess I hoped so. Better for him, that way.

I untangled the Sten’s sling from the pikestaff as I got to my feet. And it was then that I heard the strains drifting through the open doorway above my head. It was organ music.

I remembered the chapel across the great courtyard.

IT WAS A WEIRD, tormented sound that wafted through the warm morning air across the wide, open space between the keep and surrounding buildings, muted and agonized organ music that had more in common with Lon Chaney than religious adoration. It came from the little church tucked away in a far corner of the yard, an overgrown, weed-ridden green with untidy trees spread before it, a bell tower rising over its rough-stoned walls and slanted roof, the bell inside its open turret visible from where I stood at the top of the White Tower ’s steps. I took a deep breath, dreading what I might find over there, before descending those stairs and scooting across the courtyard, the soles of my boots sticky with blood, heading for the nearest cover, which was the grand neo-Gothic building opposite, expecting to be challenged at any moment.

Nothing happened though, no sudden challenge interrupted my flight across open ground, and as soon as I reached the opposite wall, I went down on my haunches, facing out, the submachine gun weaving left and right, ready for the slightest disturbance. Apart from the faint, creaky organ music from the chapel, all was quiet and still.