Грэм Мастертон - Famine

Ed walked around the side of the building to the parking-lot. It was strewn with twisted shopping-carts and burned-out automobiles. But Peter was standing in the far corner, where it seemed as if another, smaller, fire had been burning; and where there was an elaborate arrangement of shopping-carts which seemed to have been linked together to form a kind of barbecue.

When he was fifteen feet away, Ed realised what it was, and what had happened. Beside it, in a congealing heap, lay the naked remains of Senator Shearson Jones. Inside it, still half-cooked, were strips of flesh that had been cut from his thighs, his arms, and his belly.

Ed stayed where he was, and didn’t approach any closer. Peter Kaiser looked at him, unblinking, unmoving, as if he was a statue of a time that neither of them could remember.

They drove northwards, through Santa Barbara, on a day that was hot and clear. They spoke very little, and Sally, in the back seat, slept.

Peter and Karen had found Nat Petersen’s car, undamaged, but with no sign of Nat Petersen. After a half-hour talk together, they had elected to head together for Mexico, along with Jerry Stone and his wife. Ed had taken the Chevy, and his new-found family, and decided to try to find a new life for them in Washington or Oregon, out in the backwoods maybe, or in some secluded valley.

Season said, as they passed through El Encanto Heights, ‘I guess I should never have left you, really. I guess it was foolish of me.’

Ed smiled at her, not forgivingly, because she didn’t need forgiving, not for anything; but with that kind of love that sometimes feels like sorrow, because it’s so close, and yet it’s never quite close enough.

They pulled off the road a little further on, at Gaviota, overlooking the ocean; and they opened up a can of Mexicorn. The wind blew warm and fresh, and for the first time in days Ed began to relax. He felt impossibly tired.

They were almost ready to move on when they heard a low, vibrant, thrumming noise. It grew deeper, and louder, and closer, and within a few minutes they saw a formation of four-engined airplanes, turbo-prop bombers, approaching from the sea.

Thunderously, the bombers passed low overhead, and they shielded their eyes against the sun to watch them. Ed tried to count them, but there must have been more than fifty or sixty. All of them were camouflaged in khaki and blue; all of them left behind them long white vapour trails which scored the western sky long after they had headed eastwards over the Sierra Madre. All of them bore the red star of the Soviet Air force.

Ed looked down at the glittering ocean, at the spray on the California shore. Then he turned to Season and said quietly, ‘Well, we’d better get moving. We’ve got a life to lead.’

Graham Masterton trained as a newspaper reporter before beginning his career as an author. Graham’s credits as a writer include the bestselling horror novel The Manitou , which was adapted into a film starring Tony Curtis. He is also the author of the Katie Maguire crime series, which became a top-ten bestseller in 2012. Visit grahammasterton.com

BLACK ANGEL

DEATH MASK

DEATH TRANCE

EDGEWISE

HEIRLOOM

PREY

RITUAL

SPIRIT

TENGU

THE CHOSEN CHILD

THE SPHINX

UNSPEAKABLE

WALKERS

MANITOU BLOOD

REVENGE OF THE MANITOU

IKON

SACRIFICE

THE SWEETMAN CURVE

WHITE BONES

BROKEN ANGELS

RED LIGHT

TAKEN FOR DEAD

BLOOD SISTERS

BURIED

LIVING DEATH

DEAD GIRLS DANCING

DEAD MEN WHISTLING

THE LAST DROP OF BLOOD

SCARLET WIDOW

THE COVEN

GHOST VIRUS

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Head of Zeus Books

First published in the United Kingdom in 1981 by Sphere Books

This edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © Graham Masterton, 1981

The moral right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781838935757

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