Stephen Jones - Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror

We both looked.

A man — a ghoul… the word asserted its rights in my mind… was running along the outside of the fence — not running as if frightened, for they knew no fear, but running as if he had started to run by pure chance and was too mindless to halt; running by inertia, as the planets run around the stars.

Three navy men in white uniforms were running after him, pausing to fire from time to time. They were hitting him. I saw blood spray out twice and once the impact of a bullet drove him to his knees, but he bounded up immediately and ran on. Immune to shock, he would run until the bullets broke his legs — and then he would crawl — until a shot pierced his heart or brain; he moved by descriptive law.

The fence took an outward turn just behind the pit. The ghoul ran into it. The three pursuers slowed and one went to his knees to take aim. Then the ghoul clenched his fist through the mesh of the fence and tore it open. I could hear the heavy metal snap. Beside me, Larsen snorted. The ghoul slid through the broken fence and bounded into the compound. The guards scattered back from the pit, darting silhouettes against the red glare and red-rimmed shadows against the smoke. The ghoul loped towards the inferno. He didn’t see the pit, or he disregarded it. He ran right up to the rim and past it — not falling, but running into the flames. A moment later he came up from the other side, clothing ablaze and flesh melting from his bones. He was climbing out. He slipped and slid back, then came crawling out again. His hair was burning. The three navy men were through the broken fence now and, standing side by side, like a firing squad, they shot into his body. They backed off, shooting. Blood sizzled like fat in a frying pan. Slowly the creature slipped back into the pit and did not emerge again.

One of the guards laughed.

‘Saves carrying that bugger,’ he said.

I passed a hand across my eyes. I understood his jest, his coarse and callous attitude. God help me, I understood. It had been the same as laughing with Larsen at my pipe and I, too, had started to think of them as ghouls, to reason with the mentality of the Inquisition and to loathe them with instinctive fear and hatred that obscured all pity. This was primordial fear, a horror that should have been left behind when man evolved from the slime… and now rose up again to brutalise and numb the emotions, as contagious as any disease.

The fire flared and crackled merrily as it fed on this new kindling. I was sickened. I felt I could stay there no longer. I turned to Larsen. His face was like a stone idol with living eyes. Sparks swirled and darted through the night; he looked on his fiery celebration as helplessly as any worshipped god.

‘I’ll go back to town,’ I said.

Larsen looked at me; for a moment he didn’t seem to know who I was or why I was there.

‘If I may?’

‘You’re no prisoner, Harland. No more than are we all. But you’ll be safer here.’

‘No, I’ll go.’

‘As you like. I can’t spare an escort.’

I hadn’t thought of that. Numbed by the horror, I had forgotten the danger.

Or it was danger too grim to register on the mind.

Larsen said, ‘I’ll check out a rifle for you, if you like.’

He must have thought I might have qualms about that, for he added, ‘It will be safer for you if you’re carrying a gun. My men are scared. They might not be too hesitant about shooting a stranger walking alone. The rifle will be like a safe conduct, I guess.’

He stared directly at me.

The rifle was offered as a talisman, not a weapon.

‘Thank you,’ I said, not for the rifle.

I had never shot a man. 1 didn’t know if I could. But it would be comfortable to have the option.

‘Jack! Thank God you’re all right!’

The front door of the jail had been locked and when Jerry opened it he stepped quickly back. He had a gun in his hand. I looked at his gun and he regarded my rifle. Mary spoke from behind him and, a bit sheepish, Jerry holstered the gun. Just a bit sheepish, like a thin veneer laid over grim determination. He said, ‘I had a look for you at the Red Walls; place was swarming with… patrols, I guess. But they wouldn’t tell me anything.’

‘They don’t know much.’

Jerry was locking the door again; said, ‘Do you?’

‘Yes; most of it.’

I leaned the rifle against the wall. I was drained with the tension of that solitary walk back from the compound, my nerves like vibrant webs under my skin. Jerry was waiting for me to tell him what I had discovered. Mary did not look so eager to hear it. I gazed out the window at the dawn through which I’d passed. It was a glorious morning, with sunrise ringing golden blows against the shield of dusk. A fan of pale light spread out in the eastern sky, opening slowly, as if reluctant to reveal the day. These things were better wrapped in darkness.

’You’ve seen Elston?’ Mary asked.

‘I saw him. And Larsen. I’ve been in the compound; I saw some other things that… I’d rather not have known.’

‘What in hell is going on?’ Jerry asked. He was lingering the bolt on the door. ‘They’ve had vans down here with loudspeakers, telling everyone to stay inside and keep the doors locked.’ He slid the bolt back and forth, as if playing a game of chance with the lock. ‘I got a special visit from one of Larsen’s men… polite sort of guy… but he sort of told me to stay right here and keep out of it. Whatever it is.’

‘And he heard shooting,’ Mary put in.

’There’s nothing you can do, Jerry,’ I told him. ‘It’s better to stay here. And keep Mary here. This thing… well, it’s a highly contagious disease… of a sort. ’

‘Of a sort?’

And then, with Jerry swearing from time to time and Mary’s eyes growing huge and frightened, I told them what I’d found out and what I’d seen. I was grabbing words in clumps and throwing them out, glad to be rid of them; but they left hollow impressions behind. When I finished we stood silent for a time. I could feel the pattern of my nerves tingling; felt as if the schematics of my nervous system were visible, glowing through my flesh.

Jerry twisted his hat brim. ’I wonder if they really would have done that?’ he mused. ‘If they really would have used it as a weapon?’

I said, ‘Probably not. The people who develop these things aren’t the ones who have the say on using them.’

He nodded, holding his hat so that his head dipped from it, exposing a wrinkled brow. He said, ‘I was in the army. Didn’t mind the idea of fighting. Never would of wanted to do a thing like that, though; ain’t no enemy deserves a thing like that.’

‘If only Elston had been more… courageous,’ Mary said. ‘A strange men, Elston. I’m not sure…’

‘Well, I reckon we’d best get Mary off the island,’ said the sheriff. He had slipped into his redneck accent; I wasn’t sure if it was deliberate.

’I doubt they’ll let anyone leave until. ’

’Hell, they can’t tell me not to go to the police cruiser. I’m still the law here… outside the compound, leastwise.’

‘They wouldn’t let me use the Coast Guard boat,’ Mary said.

’Different thing, that is.’

’We could try,’ I said.

‘Why, sure. Anyone tries to stop us, I’ll arrest him.’ He gave us a grim smile. ‘I’ll run you two over to the Keys. Guess I ought to come back, myself… although I can’t say I’m too damned keen on the idea.’

‘There’s no reason to; nothing you can do.’

‘That’s not the point, so much. Just that the sheriff hadn’t ought to run out on a thing like this.’ He was still mangling his Stetson; it was on the back of his head now, battered and twisted. His dedication was twisted, too; his sense of duty and obligation. I knew how he felt. Some insane part of my mind was telling me that I should stay on Pelican and see this out. It was more than getting a story, far more than a dedication to my work, but the turnings of such a resolve were too devious to follow, too sigmoidal to trace through the mind. I wanted to go.