Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

'A fireball, vast, hot, rushing up on its own thermals, and sucking in the air to fuel itself; sucking the air into a self-perpetuating spiral, a superheated whirlwind. It swept east out of the Sturt Desert, its base widening out as it came, a column of fire five and then ten miles across. At more than a hundred miles an hour it hit a place called Dirranbandi and burned the entire town, just took it out. And everything it burned fuelled the fire, that got hotter and hotter. And on it came. The thing moved like a drunkard — never in a straight line but just exactly like a tornado — a pillar of fire reaching up through the clouds. 'Of course it was monitored, thousands of people reported seeing it. It came terrifyingly close to some towns, scorching them but leaving them intact; then again it seemed to swoop on

others, tossed them into the sky in blazing rags. Firefighters tried to plot its course from the air; some airplanes flew too close and got sucked in, incinerated. And rotating ever faster, it rushed east to refuel itself on the Alton oil field…

'So it goes, and I can't remember all of it. But who would want to? Anyway, the whole thing was on every TV channel. Every Aussie there ever was watched it happening, couldn't do a thing about it. The authorities thought the mountains would stop it — they were wrong. It blazed across the Divide, leaving a smoking track twelve miles wide in its wake, with secondary fires still ranging outwards. The latter would burn for weeks until torrential rains stopped them.

'And with only an hour's warning to the people of Brisbane — an indefinite warning at that, for no one could say for sure what this thing would do — finally it hit, this firestorm from hell, such as the world had never before seen. Never before and never since, thank God!

'Everything that could burn burned. If it couldn't burn it calcined. And if it couldn't calcine it melted. As for the Brisbane River: forget it. It was running at a trickle and had been for a nine-month. The firestorm took what was left of the river water, turned it to steam in a couple of seconds and kept right on going.

'And that was it: a one-hundred-miles-per-hour blast furnace had killed a city and everyone it it who couldn't or hadn't tried to get out following the warning. They hadn't all died by burning; a great many people, gone underground or into cellars, suffocated because the fire needed their air. All of it. Then:

'The thing hit the sea and sucked up a waterspout into its raging funnel. The water put the fire out, turned to steam, and formed clouds. The clouds drifted inland and rained on the raging inferno that had been Brisbane. Finally it was over. End of story…'

… And after a while:

'Christ!' Jake said, under his breath. And a moment later:

'That is some encyclopedic memory you've got there, Jimmy. What are you, an authority on world disasters?'

Harvey shrugged a little selfconsciously — perhaps sheepishly? — and said, 'Me? No — but I know a woman who is. Before we broke camp, I had to talk to HQ about a couple of communications problems. Millicent Cleary was on Duty Officer. She's our current affairs lady; she has that kind of memory, keeps a mental record of just about everything that's going or gone down. As lan Goodly knows the future, she knows the recent past; but of course she has a big advantage: like, it's already happened. And unlike lan's her knowledge comes in amazing detail. So when I told her we'd be setting up next in Brisbane, she clued me in on the city, the fire, the Earth Year Conference. And there you have it: the fire's still fresh in my mind from my conversation with Millicent Cleary.'

Harvey sat back and looked out of his window. After a moment's silence he said, 'But actually, I wish it wasn't…'

In the other limo, the episode of the tall, thin plane-spotter (if that was what he had been) had been forgotten by everyone except Liz Merrick. She, too, was trying to put it to the back of her mind, but knew she'd be able to recall it if or when it was required — His silhouette etched on her memory: his angular shape. And the tilt of his broad-brimmed hat, that kept the sun out of his eyes. The way his binoculars were trained on… trained on what, a mainly empty sky? That was what had been bothering her! That, and the way those glasses had suddenly dipped., turning towards the limo.

That was when Liz's mind had been closest to his, the moment when she'd sensed his interest in the vehicle and its occupants…

'So how about it?' said Ben Trask, causing her to start as he reached over her and switched off the intercom connection to their driver.

'Eh?' she said. And: 'Oh, I'm sorry, Ben. I must have been daydreaming. How about what?'

'Jake, on the chopper. What was going on? Did you get anything?'

And now the image of the thin man with the binoculars vanished completely from her mind as the other question arose, the one Liz had known she would have difficulty answering.

At first it had seemed simple, even exciting in a strange and morbid sort of way. The answer to not just one question but many. But after thinking it over she had seen the enormous hurt it might cause, so that now she had to find a way around it. If Trask would let her.

'But I thought we had an understanding on that,' she said. 'I don't like spying on Jake, and—'

'What?' He cut her off. 'But on the chopper you seemed to indicate that you'd got something. So why are you holding back, Liz? What the hell is going on here?' The look on Trask's face was one of incredulity; he'd been sure they'd hammered this out and from now on it would be plain sailing. So what had happened to change her mind?

'I… I'm not sure what I got!' she blurted it out, lying so unconvincingly that even without his talent Trask would have known. And she saw in his eyes that he knew, and in the way his lips tightened. 'But… but he's my partner!' She quickly went on the defensive. 'He's got to be able to trust me. He saved my life, and—'

'Oh, for Christ's sake spare me!' Trask barked. But before he could say anything else:

'Damn you!' Liz snapped. And then more quietly, even desperately: 'Can't you see? I'm trying to spare you, Ben!'

Which set him back a little, because he saw that that was the truth, too. And despite that Trask was still frowning, his tone was less severe when he said: 'All right, so don't try so hard.'

And after a moment, when she remained silent, he went on, 'Look, whatever this is, there's only you, me, and lan here to share it. So let's have it out in the open here and now, while we can still deal with it in private. For if it has to do with me — and if it's got anything at all to do with the Branch or the job in hand — then obviously I have to know.'

'But it's so very little,' she answered. 'And his shields were up, like a blanket covering his mind, and—'

'Liz, I have to know!' Trask insisted. 'It doesn't matter how small a thing it might seem to you, it could be all-important to everyone else.'

'In its way, I'm sure it is/ Liz said. 'It's just that I would have liked to find a way to tell you — I mean a different way to tell you — without this.'

'This what?' said Trask. 'And Liz, if you lie to me again I'll know.'

She looked at him, looked at lan Goodly, sighed and shook her head. 'I didn't want to lie, but I didn't want to hurt you either. You see, it's.where Jake was — in his dream, I mean — and it's who he was speaking to.'

'Go on,' Trask nodded.

'He was down in the wrecked sump of the Romanian Refuge,' she blurted it out. 'But Ben, it had to be much more than just a dream because from what I saw of it — despite that it was so dark and shrouded — it was all so very real.''

"The Refuge?' Trask repeated her. 'Jake dreamed he was in the wrecked sump? And he was… speaking to someone?'