No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories (41 page)

Muddy water was in my nostrils, trickling into my mouth. I felt the hideous suction and was unable to fight it. I was done for and I knew it. But I also knew of another world, more real than Simon Carlisle’s place of waiting. The world of the quick, of the living, of hope that springs eternal. And at the last—even as I gagged at the ooze that was slopping into my mouth—I called for help, cried out until all I could do was choke and splutter.

And my cries were answered!

“Paul!” came a shout, a familiar voice, which in my terror I barely recognized. “Paul Stanard, is that ye down there? Man, what in the name of all that’s—?”

“Help! Help!” I coughed and gurgled.

And Carlisle cried, “No! No! I won’t be cheated! It can’t end like this. Drink, drown, die, you bloody obstinate man! You are my one, my last chance. So die,
die
!”

He drifted toward me, got down beside me, tried to push at my face and drive my head down into the mud. But his hands were mist, his furious, burning face, too, and his cries were fading as he himself melted away, his fury turning to terror. “No, no,
noooo
!“ And he was gone.

Gone, too, the mist, and where Carlisle’s claw-like hands had sloughed into nothingness, stronger hands were reaching to fasten on my jacket, to lift my face from the slop, to draw my head and shoulders to safety out of—

—Out of just six inches of muddy water!

And Andrew Quarry was standing ankle deep in it, standing there with his Jennie, her raven hair shining in the corona of the sun that silhouetted her head. And nothing of that phantom mist to be seen, no sign of Carlisle, and no bog but this shallow pond of muddied rain-water lying on mainly solid ground…

“Did you…did you see him, or it?” I gasped, putting a shaking hand down into the water to push myself up and take the strain off Quarry’s arms. But the bottom just there was soft as muck; my hand skidded, and again I floundered.

“Him? It?” Quarry shook his head, his eyes like saucers in his weathered face. “We saw nothin’. But what the hell
happened
to ye, man?” And again he tugged at me, holding me steady.

Still trembling, cold and soaking wet—scarcely daring to believe I had lived through it—I said. “It was him, Carlisle. He tried to kill me.” As I spoke, so my fumbling hand found and grasped something solid in the muddy shallows: a rounded stone, it could only be.

But my thumb sank into a hole, and as I got to my knees I brought the “stone” with me. Stone? No,
a grinning skull
, and I knew it was him! All that it lacked was his maniac laughter and a red-burning glare in its empty black socket eyes…

At Quarry’s place, while Jennie telephoned the police—to tell them of my “discovery” on Dartmoor—her father sat outside the bathroom door while I showered. By then the fog had lifted from my mind and I was as nearly normal as I had felt in what seemed like several ages. Normal in my mind, but tired, indeed exhausted in my body.

Andrew Quarry knew that, also knew why and what my problem had been. But he’d already cautioned me against saying too much in front of Jennie. “She would’nae understand, and I cannae say I’m that sure myself. But when ye told me ye’d been warned off, and by Old Joe…”

“Yes, I know.” Nodding to myself, I turned off the shower, stepped out and began to towel myself dry. “But he’s not real—I mean, no longer real—is he?”

“But he was until four years ago.” Quarry’s voice was full of awe. “He used tae call in here on his rounds—just the once a year—for a drink and a bite. And he would tell me where he had been, up and down the country. I liked him. But just there, where ye parked ye’re car, that was where Old Joe’s number came up. He must hae been like a wee rabbit, trapped in the beam of the headlights, in the frozen moments before that other car hit him. A tragic accident, aye.” Then his voice darkened. “Ah, but as for that
other
…”

“Simon Carlisle?” Warm and almost dry, still I shivered.

“That one, aye,” Quarry growled, from behind the bathroom door where it stood ajar. “I recognized his name as soon as ye mentioned it. It was eighteen years ago and all the newspapers were full of it. It was thought Carlisle had fled the country, for he was the chief suspect in a double moors murder. And—”

“I know all about it,” I cut him off. “Carlisle, he…he told me, even
showed
me! And if you hadn’t come along—if you hadn’t been curious about my…my condition, my state of mind after what I’d said to you on the ’phone—he would have killed me, too. The only thing I don’t, can’t understand: how could he have drowned in just six inches of water?”

“Oh, I can tell ye that!” Quarry answered at once. “Eighteen years ago was a verra bad winter, followed by a bad spring. Folks had seen nothin’ like it. Dartmoor was a swamp in parts, and
that
part was one of them. The rain, it was like a monsoon, erodin’ many of the small hillocks intae landslides. Did ye no notice the steepness of that wee knoll, where all the soil had been washed down intae the depression? Six inches, ye say? Why, that low-lyin’ ground was a veritable lake of mud…a marsh, a quag!”

Dressed in some of Quarry’s old clothes, nodding my understanding, I went out and faced him. “So that’s how it was.”

“That’s right. But what
I
dinnae understand: why would the damned creature—that dreadful man, ghost, thing—why would it want tae kill ye? What, even now? Still murderous, even as a revenant? But how could he hope tae benefit frae such a thing?”

At that, I very nearly told him a secret known only to the dead…and now to me. But, since we weren’t supposed to know, I simply shook my head and said nothing…

As for those pictures I’d snapped, of Simon Carlisle on Tumble Tor: when the film was developed there was only the bare rock, out of focus and all lopsided. None of which came as any great surprise to me.

And as for my lovely Jennie: well, I’ve never told her the whole thing. Andrew asked me not to, said there was a danger in people knowing such things. He’s probably right. We should remember our departed loved ones, of course we should, but however painful the parting we should also let them go. That is, if and when they
can
go, and if they’re in the right place of waiting.

Myself: well, I don’t go out on the moor any more, because for one thing I know Old Joe is out there patiently waiting for an accident to set him free. That old tramp, yes, and lord only knows how many others, waiting in the hedgerows at misted crossroads on dark nights, and in remote, derelict houses where they died in their beds before there were telephones, ambulances and hospitals…

So then, now I sit in my garden, and as the setting sun begins to turn a few drifting clouds red, I rotate these things in my mind while watching the last handful of seagulls heading south for Brixham harbour. And I think at them:
Ah, but you’ve missed out on a grand fish supper, you somewhat less than early birds. Your friends set out well over an hour ago!

Then I smile to myself as I think:
Well, maybe they heard me. Who knows, maybe that flying-ant telepathy of theirs works just as well with people!

And I watch a jet airplane making clouds as it loses altitude, heading for Exeter Airport. Those ruler-straight trails, sometimes disappearing and sometimes blossoming, fluffing themselves out or pulling themselves apart, drifting on the aerial tides…and waiting?

Small fluffs of cloud: revenant vapour trails waiting for the next jet airplane, perhaps, so that they too can evaporate? I no longer rule out anything.

But I’m very glad my mother died in hospital, not at home. And I
will
have the pool filled in. Either that or we’re moving to a house without a pool, and one that’s located a lot closer to the hospital.

And when I think of disasters like Pompeii, or Titanic—

—Ah, but I mustn’t, I simply mustn’t…

The banks of makeshift air filters were whirring away, working overtime in the concrete ceiling of the great Operations Room, once the basement of the biggest shoe store in central London’s Oxford Street. At first the monotony of their massed, whistling hiss was an aggravation—not unlike the subdued howling of an airplane’s jet engines coming through the fuselage walls, which if you’re subjected to it long enough will eventually turn into white noise—and I had been listening to the air filters for quite some time.

I was there early; I liked to have time to myself, to sit and think before my audience arrived. My audience: the flamers, slashers, poisoners, mulchers, and acid sprayers. An army actually, made up of sections, squads, platoons. I was here in the role of a Commander: to direct and inspire them, warn and forearm them; to issue their orders for the day or, where some of them were headed, for the endless night of underground London.

Why me? Probably because I’d seen the start of it, issued the very first warnings, understood—as best possible—what had happened and was still happening…which made me as good a choice as any, apparently. As a conventional general there’s no doubt I would be a dismal failure, but until recently I had been the assistant director at Kew Gardens. Enough said.

Rills of dust, dislodged by the vibration of distant jackhammers, trickled down from the ceiling, were stirred a little by the draft from the air filters. Somewhere up above they were digging out the Green, spraying acid, preparing to lay concrete and gradually turning London grey.
And the sooner the better
, I thought,
but never quickly enough
.

The sound of muted footsteps and the scrape of steel-framed chairs on the gritty floor brought me upright in my seat behind my desk on the podium. Two young men, yawning, gaunt-faced, had seated themselves side by side in the third row of four hundred as yet empty chairs. Early birds, new to the game, they awaited their instructions. Well, let them wait. The hundreds were still to come trickling in.

And not only here but all over England, all over the world. For each city had its volunteer army, and each morning the war started all over again. Indeed, it never stopped, couldn’t ever stop, daren’t stop. Not if we were to survive. The night shifts were coming off now, and the day shifts—the morning forays—were soon to begin. But never a stranger war than this.

The cities: they were our redoubts, concrete islands floating in an enemy ocean. As for the enemy: there were millions of square miles of him…

My notes were before me; updated every three or four hours during the night as reports from the battle areas came in, they were as current as could be. My job was simply to read them out loud to the army and then send the men out to their battle locations. But not until the troops were gathered here en masse.

Even as I thought that thought, more scraping sounded from the back of the marching ranks of empty chairs as another bunch of early birds adjusted their seats. And more dust came smoking down as the distant jackhammers started up again.

I tapped my microphone’s grid and was reassured by its pop and crackle, then sat back. And with time to spare I let myself slump down in my seat a little, let my mind wander, remembering how it all began…

It was the meteorite, for sure. But it was probably more than just that. It may also have been—just
may
have been—what they were doing with the crops: genetically modified food. The scientists, botanists, geneticists, had engineered it so that the green things could fight back; fight disease, weeds, bugs, too much sun, hard rains, and yet still prosper in the poorest soil, growing stronger and giving a better yield. We’d made it easier for them to conquer all of their worst enemies, without taking into account that
we
were their worst enemy. We were the ones—men, and the animals we bred—who
ate
them for God’s sake! And now they’re eating us.

Genetic modification, yes, and also the meteorite. In fact, mainly the meteorite.

It was a small thing, three and a half inches long, two and a half wide, like a big egg. A lump of pockmarked rock, seared black at the fat end, convoluted like a morel or a brain coral at the thin end. Not a meteorite shower, like in
The Day of the Triffids
, just one small rock. And no one woke up blind, and no one was in any way affected. Not at first, anyway.

But that first year: well, we might as well have
been
blind for all the attention we paid. I remembered it like it was yesterday…

Three years ago; just three years, my God! Two-thirty on an early June morning; a clear starry sky outside my window; something had started me awake. A pistol shot? The echoes of a drum roll quickly fading on the still, small-hours air? Thunder? No, not thunder. No way. So what, then?

I got up, went to the window and opened it wide, looked out and up and away. A vapour trail, curving down out of the stars, was already dispersing, blown on the soft night breeze. A trace of cordite or sulphur stink drifted in the air, also dispersing. And fifty or so yards away, in my next-door neighbour’s garden, a thin column of smoke was spiralling up from the rose beds.

Had something crashed? Well obviously, but not an airplane, or it would be visible and there’d be an inferno. Had something fallen off an airplane, perhaps? Or a fragment of space debris, a bit broken off from one of the myriad satellites up there? Or…could it perhaps have been a meteorite?

It had taken me one or two minutes to come fully awake, so that by the time I’d thought all these things through the smoke from my neighbour’s garden had thinned to nothing, likewise the vapour trail in the sky and the gunpowder plot smell. And everything seemed back to normal.

Except, of course, it wasn’t…

He was called Gordon Sellick, a retired army colonel whose wife had died several years ago, and he lived next door or mainly in his garden…in fact he lived
for
his garden, because that was his life now. But when I say “next door” don’t misunderstand me. We were neighbours, but ours were fairly large detached houses, each set in a quarter acre, with long gardens that ran parallel down to the river. A solitary type myself, I enjoyed living in the country a few short miles from my work. Commuting was easy and I didn’t have to spend too much time in the cluttered noisy world between gardens, mine and the more extensive, more exotic ones at Kew.

I could see Gordon Sellick at a distance in his garden just about any old time, or close up to talk to on a Friday night in the Olde Horse and Carriage, our village pub at the bend in the river. But this thing from the sky had landed on a Saturday and I wasn’t about to wait the week out. Up at eight, I breakfasted and then went round to his place.

He was in the garden, as I’d suspected he would be. And he had found the meteorite.

“So you heard it,“ he said, beckoning me closer.

“I’d have had to be deaf not to!” I answered. “Is that it?”

Sellick was leaning on his spade in the middle of a bed of beautiful roses, a few in full bloom but many just now budding. At his feet, a small crater was plainly visible, with good dark earth thrown out in typical ray fashion. “Went in about a foot, maybe an inch or so more,” he said. And he handed it over, this rock as I’ve described it, which he’d only just this minute dug out.

“A meteorite,” I nodded, brushing dust and dirt off it. “A good job it didn’t hit the house. Would have come right through the tiles!”

“Would have been hot, too,” he answered. “Gave me a hell of a fright! Rattled the windows like billy-o, but it doesn’t seem to have damaged my roses. I’d have been pretty mad about that.”

Gordon Sellick was all army. A six-footer in his youth, but beginning to bend a bit now, he still had his curling handlebar moustache and bristling brows—far more hair on his face than above it—and his shiny dome was brown as can be as a result of his interminable gardening. Out in all weathers, ex-Colonel Sellick.

I examined the rock, which was heavy. “This rounded end…fried off and blackened by atmospheric friction.” I offered my opinion. “And the pointed end…hmmm! Looks odd.” I frowned. “Might be crystalline. Some metallic ore forged in an exploding star, then pitted and patterned in the frozen deeps of space.”

One of Sellick’s ample white eyebrows went up, in something of surprise I supposed. “So then, you’re a bit of a poet—eh, what? Well, can’t complain about that, what with my garden and my roses and what all. Roses? Bloody flowers? Why, they’d have laughed me out of the bloody officers mess! Funny the things a man can get up to, when he’s on his own and there’s bugger all else to do.”

He was a lonely one, the old colonel.

“What’ll you do with it?” I handed the meteorite back.

He shrugged. “Oh, I’ll make a few enquiries. Offer it to a museum. Might even try to sell it. See if they can find any of those Martian bugs in it—eh, what?
Hah!
And if none of that works, I’ll sit it in a pot indoors with some of my cactuses.”

In fact it went to a museum, into a case behind good thick glass. Best place for it. Better still if it had never arrived here at all…

Shooting stars, comets, meteorites. The way they’ve shaped this world of ours…it’s incredible. And I wonder how many people have thought about it. I look back at all the mass extinctions, at what happened to the dinosaurs, and I wonder.

But for that BIG rock all those millions of years ago, it’s even possible that some kind of dinosaur might be lording it in the world right now, living in dinosaur cities, and facing this new unthinkable threat instead of us. Unthinkable in that none of us would ever have thought of it.

But in fact the big rock landed, the dinosaurs were killed off, men evolved, and before you knew it these three kings were following a different kind of shooting star, one that didn’t so much shoot as creep across the sky. And didn’t
that
turn things around—“eh, what?” I’m told that some eighty per cent of all the world’s wars were caused by religion, but not this current conflict, though it’s a safe bet there’s a babble of religious lunatics out there right now blaming it all on God…