Dennis Wheatley - Black August

This Gregory was loath to concede since in a time of crisis it would mean his having to support a number of useless mouths who could no longer make a return for their keep, but eventually a compromise was reached. Merrilees was to place thirty of the fittest men in his community permanently at Gregory's disposal forthwith, to be trained in the use of arms and apprenticed to the fisherman's craft, so that they would be a present help and an additional support, in case it should become necessary to receive the whole Labour Colony into the sanctuary of Shingle Street.

When the treaty was concluded, Merrilees puffed thoughtfully at his pipe, filled with dried herbs, with which he was already experimenting and looked across at Gregory from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

'What's your opinion of the trend of things, General?'

The corners of Gregory's mouth drew down into an ugly bow. 'Pretty black,' he confessed. 'It seems to me that the present civilisation is doomed utterly. Railways, planes, motor cars, newspapers, are only words now; for all practical purposes they have ceased to exist. Even the wireless which might have kept us in touch with things, has broken down. It's ten days since the broadcasting stations have been silent, which means beyond any shadow of doubt that the mob have triumphed over any form of organised Government. It means the survival of the fittest, and for those who do survive, back to the land in almost primitive conditions.'

'I'll not agree to that,' Merrilees protested. 'We're passing through a terrible upheaval, I'll grant you, but the people will adjust themselves to changing conditions and the innate sanity of the British working man will prove the ultimate salvation of the country.'

"Perhaps he’s a fine fellow, but it's difficult to keep sane on an empty tummy. I see no remedy short of divine manifestation and I think we can count that out.'

'You're wrong there, General. The Lord shows His will in strange ways at times, and like as not it will be in a movement of the common people.'

Gregory nodded silently, forbearing to voice his own conviction that race movements and mass urges, either to sound policies or madness, had for their inception fundamental reasons which al owed no place for a benign or angry God.

'Besides,' Mr. Merrilees went on, 'there must be other groups like ours scattered all over the country, whose leaders are getting into touch for the general benefit like you and I today.'

'Here and there,' Gregory agreed, 'but you forget the great industrial centres. I can do with vegetables and you can do with fish, but neither of us would swap a rabbit for a railway train, so the poor devils in the towns stand no chance, and the trouble is that they are in the great majority. Tell me what do your people do if they fall sick, ordinarily?'

'There's the hospital at Ipswich.'

'True, but from all reports nobody's life is safe there any more. What do you intend to do with them in the future?

'I hadn't thought, but why do you ask me this?'

'Because it is our greatest danger. People are killing each other in the towns already, some are dying as we sit here, in attempts to loot; others in trying to defend their property. Soon there will be thousands dropping by the wayside from sheer starvation. It is too much to hope that even a tenth of them will receive proper burial, and it is August, remember. The bodies will decay in the hot sun.'

'Yes, I take your meaning.'

'Disease will spread like wildfire, perhaps even plague will develop and sweep the country like the Black Death in 1348. What do you mean to do if some of your people begin to sicken?'

Merrilees bowed his grey head. 'It is a terrible picture that you paint, General. What can one do but try to nurse them back to health?'

'I'm sorry,' Gregory leant over the deal table, 'perhaps I'm looking on the black side.'

'No, we must face facts and you have spoken of a terrible possibility.'

Then to save the majority we must sacrifice the unfortunate, you see that, don't you?'

'What is it that you would have me do?'

'Isolate ruthlessly. It sounds brutal, I know, but we've got to do it for the sake of our respective people. Select a house a good mile from your Colony. I will do the same. The sick must be sent there to fend for themselves; if their relations care to accompany them, that is their look out, but there must be no communication and no exception to the rule.'

'But they'd die there without aid or comfort, man!'

'Maybe, but if you were sick yourself, which would you rather do; stay and endanger your companions, or take a chance of pulling through alone?'

The elderly man regarded him out of sad eyes. 'Why that's a simple problem, General, as you know yourself. It's these others that I'm thinking of.'

'Well, we ask no more of them than we would be willing to give, and as leaders we should be prepared to enforce our judgment; otherwise we are not fitted to be leaders.'

'Ah, it's a hard thing you ask, but you are right.'

'Then from tomorrow I think each of us should hold a morning inspection. Every man, woman, and child should be present; and if any are sick they should be given rations, but they must go. Is that agreed?'

'Yes, it shall be as you say; and may the Lord have mercy upon us all.'

A quarter of an hour later Gregory took his leave, and with a puzzled look upon his careworn face, the ageing fighter of many battles in the good cause of a fair wage for a fair day's labour, watched his retreating figure as, lean and panther like, his shoulders curiously hunched, he swung away into the distance.

On his homeward journey Gregory encountered two incidents which seemed to bear out his gloomy prophecy. First a dead horse lying at the roadside. Obviously the poor beast had recently been hamstrung, and from its still steaming haunches neat strips of flesh had been removed, while from the bracken a hundred yards away a thin spiral of smoke ascended. He did not doubt that certain very hungry persons were there gleefully awaiting an impromptu meal. The second might have proved his undoing had he been less well prepared. Three men with gaunt, strained faces, from which the eyes bulged large and unnaturally bright, leapt from the bushes at a turning in the lane and set upon him with silent animal ferocity. He felled the first with his loaded crop and flinging himself back against the bank covered the others with his automatic. They tell into a miserable whining about their ravenous Hunger, and in a sudden access of pity he flung them the emergency lunch which he had carried with him to Hollesley; yet, turning from them as they fought for the parcel in the road, his clear intellect, rejecting compromise, told him that he would have done them better service had he put a bullet through their brains.

The sentry at Veronicas newly erected notice board reported when Gregory reached it, that he had had a trying day. On one occasion he had actually had to fire over the heads of a party of intruders before he could scare them away; so on the last mile into Shingle Street, Gregory resolved that his guards should be trebled, and two men apiece from his new Labour Colony levies set to support each of his armed sentries, it was evidently no longer safe to leave them in such isolated positions on their own.

That night at dinner Gregory told them of his conversation with Merrilees and his agreement to shelter the population of the Labour Colony if they were attacked, but Kenyon shrugged his shoulders.

'I can't see what either of you are worrying about,' he declared. 'We may have to deal with a few poor starving wretches that any well fed man who is carious enough could drive off with a stick, but the refugees from the great centres aren't organised, so what earthly harm can they do to us?'

'No, but those who survive soon will be,' Gregory prophesied grimly. 'The strong men are probably forming Workers' and Soldiers' Councils now, and to keep the life in their bodies they’ll take anything they can lay their hands on before we're through. I haven't thrown up these entrenchments to keep off tramps and derelicts, but an organised attack upon a definite source of supply. Our only hope then will be to make it so hot for them that they will leave us alone and go for easier game until they settle down, with an enormously reduced population, to new conditions. Then we may be able to make a deal with whatever powers there may be.'