James Rouch - Plague Bomb

‘I’ll join you.’ Gross tumbled and lurched from the back of the Rover to spew noisily beside it, coughing and spitting loudly when he’d finished. ‘Must be all the fucking bubbles that do it for me. How those bloody chinless wonders can swill that champagne muck all night and day I’ll never know.’

Retching was all that Sherry could achieve, even with that revolting display only yards from her. Unable to prevent them she gave a series of loud belches that the back of her hand only partially smothered, but afterward her stomach felt more settled.

‘Better?’ Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Gross plonked down beside her. ‘I knew a fat tart once who did that, not with her mouth though.’ He tried to put his arm around Sherry, but she shrugged him off and got up. Rising unsteadily, Gross joined her in leaning on the balcony rail. ‘And I don’t mean her mouth either.’ From a distended pocket he tugged a bottle, and after a wrestle to extract the cork, took a long pull at it. ‘When we had it off, always in the good old missionary position, I had this trick of almost withdrawing at the end of each thrust. By the time the old juices were ready to flow I’d have her pumped full of air. Soon as I’d finished and climbed off she’d shove her hands down hard on her gut and out it’d all come again.’ Not deterred by the first rebuff, he tried again to put his arm over her shoulders.

‘You touch me again and I’ll stomp your balls off.’

‘Say that again. I like it when you talk dirty. At home I’ve got a video of that scene where the black tries to bugger you in that shop doorway, and you tell him what he can do with his tool. That’s a favourite of mine.’ Offering the bottle, Gross had it pushed back at him.

‘Get lost.’

Impatient at the delay, Webb left the driving seat and brought the woman a drink of water. He carefully peeled the lid from the Tupperware beaker before handing it to her. ‘We are wasting time. Are you ready to go again yet?’

‘Oh what’s up, Webby.’ Pouring a drop of wine on the withered stump of a begonia in a window box, Gross peered closely at it, squinting to see it in the dark, as if expecting an elixir quality in the Mosel to immediately restore it to full bloom. ‘Did that little bit of excitement up ahead earlier get you just a teensy bit frightened? Don’t you like bonfires?’

‘All I want is to make it safely to our destination. I am worried about Edwards’ condition. We need him alive to retain the maximum credibility of our mission. Our message will be devalued if his name is not on it also.’

‘Bollocks.’ Holding the bottle high, Gross jiggled it and then put it to his ear to try to determine how much remained of its contents. ‘The old windbag was devalued years ago, when all his arse-holing chums at university were exposed in the British Sunday press. From what I read it’d seem that when those cap and gowned queers weren’t trying to spawn another commie cell they were frantically trying to spawn each other. Between planting agents with bogus degrees in the British civil service and buggering the piles out of their students I wonder they ever had time to give lectures.’

‘Well we still cannot stay here, it might not be healthy.’

‘That at least makes more sense than the crap you came out with before.’ With all the force he could muster, Gross threw the empty bottle through & small window in the chalet door. ‘Come on Kane, stop bloody heaving. Your tits wobble every time you do it and I’m going to spunk in my pants if you don’t stop.’

Wheezing snores came from the back of the Range Rover. Webb listened before starting the engine.

‘Does he sound congested to you? There are some marks on his face, do you think he might have swallowed some?’

‘If he has then it won’t matter how soon we get help for the daft old sod, he’s had it.’ Gross sought among the bottles on the floor for a full one. ‘Back in the seventies I did a stint on an industrial injuries tribunal, dealt with a few cases of accidents in chemical plants. Get any of that muck inside you and it rots your insides, especially if it goes into your lungs. Infection sets in and you drown in your own pus.’

Everything else Sherry Kane had been able to cope with, Gross being violently ill, his filthy stories; but the picture that last information conjured was too much, and she barely got her head out of the window in time.

The notes Webb had made before starting out told him to expect sunrise at a few minutes after seven. It was nearer nine o’clock before they became aware of a perceptible lightening of the sky ahead, and that was muted by the suspended dust through which the orb of the sun only faintly showed.

For Sherry it would have been better if it had waited a further hour before shedding its weak light on the ravaged land. They drove into a small town that only needed a wave of a wand to restore it to bustling life again.

Whatever had struck the inhabitants had struck very fast, without hint of warning. There was nothing to suggest that any warning had been broadcast, any precautions taken or panic started.

A bus and a few trucks partially obstructed the main street. Some had coasted to a gentle stop, but several had been in collisions, with each other, with shop fronts, with trees. The Range Rover had frequently to be driven onto the pavement to negotiate the enforced slalom course. In every cab they passed they saw the same sight.

Draped over steering wheels, sprawled across passenger seats were the vehicles’ drivers. Most were miraculously preserved inside their glass and steel mausoleums, others, where windows were down, were decomposed to varying repulsive degrees.

And there was worse. No vegetation had grown to hide what lay in the streets and playgrounds. The yards of the schools were thick with the skeletal remains of children, rows of larger bones and skulls outside a bakery marked where a food queue had succumbed. Still strapped in a pushchair, mummified and eyeless, the tiny frame of a baby.

‘I don’t want to see any more. Tell me when it’s gone.’ Putting her face in her hands Sherry could try to pretend that the town of the dead did not exist, but she knew it was there still, she could hear bones crunching under the wheels, could feel the bumping as they rode over skulls that collapsed under the vehicle’s weight.

Only slowly did it register that a hand had come over the seat back, on over her shoulder and after a consoling pat in pretence of administering comfort was trying to find a way inside her shirt.

For a while she made no move to stop its groping progress as it rubbed and pinched and squeezed the contours of her chest, then still in the same trance-like state of shock she reached for it, lifted it gently to her lips, and sank her teeth into it.

Gross’s screamed obscenity drowned the loud hiss of escaping air as a razor-sharp shard of hip bone pierced a tire.

FROM MI6 THROUGH CIA LONDON.

FOR DISTRIBUTION TO ALL SECTIONS:

STATE DEPARTMENT, PENTAGON. TOP COPY FOR PRESIDENT.

ROZENKOV. YURI NIKOLAI. COLONEL. KGB.

JOINED COMMUNIST YOUTH MOVEMENT 1939.

PARTY MEMBER 1942.

VOLUNTEERED FOR ARMY SPRING 1943.

SELECTED FOR NKVD AFTER COMPLETION OF BASIC TRAINING AT CAMP 1094. PROMOTED TO JUNIOR SERGEANT IN JANUARY 1945. MEMBER OF THE RAIDING PARTY SENT INTO BERLIN TO SECURE THE FILES AT GESTAPO HQ BEFORE THEY COULD BE DESTROYED.

DECORATED TWICE FOR VALOR.

AFTER THE WAR WORKED ON THE EIGHT FLOOR OF KGB HEADQUARTERS AT 2, DZHERZHINSKIY SQUARE, IN THE OFFICE DEALING WITH THE TRANSLATION AND EVALUATION OF CAPTURED DOCUMENTS.

PROMOTED TO SERGEANT 1952 ON JOINING 3RD. BATTALION, FIRST DZHERZHINSKIY MOTORIZED DIVISION, RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GUARDING OF GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS IN MOSCOW. WAS ON LEAVE WHEN THE ATTEMPTED COUP BY BERIA FAILED IN 1953.