Slither (20 page)

‘Yes. There was no need for you to come, I’m all right.’ Brittle; the words carefully chosen to hurt. ‘Don’t know why you bothered. I’m living with Auntie Sue now.’

‘I’m staying with Tegwyn Aneurin Rhys. I told you about him. Westport’s been evacuated, and a lot of other places too.’ Stick to the facts, he told himself. Don’t lie; don’t try to disguise anything. ‘The Government’s given me a job which keeps me very busy.’

She looked at him, unmoved, as though patiently waiting for the visit to end.

‘I hear you were playing tennis yesterday.’

That didn’t work either; she said nothing.

‘And you go riding, I imagine.’

‘No!’

It was an outburst; her face flushed with hostility. She stared at him, her eyes dark with hatred. He stood there uneasily, awkwardly, in front of his ten-year-old daughter and didn’t know what to say next. She broke the silence.

‘You’re back with that Fran,’ she accused him. ‘You’re glad Mummy’s dead, aren’t you? Both of you? Now there’s nothing to stop you. You’re glad.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he told her quietly. ‘You know very well that’s silly.’

‘When I got home I didn’t know where she was. I called out for her just to say I was back. I knew she was around somewhere ’cos the lights were on. So I looked upstairs in case she was lying down. She’d been drinking whisky. Then I heard water from the bathroom and I went to look and…’

‘Don’t, Jenny. Don’t.’ He moved to put his arm around her but she flung away from him.

‘They were eating Mummy, your worms. In the bath. There was blood, and they were eating inside her.’ She backed towards the door, her lips quivering, but her voice hard and un-dramatic. No tears either. ‘I turned off the shower and I went
to phone you. Mummy had the number of the hotel written down on the pad. They said you were back but there was no answer from your room. Then I thought, he’s with
her
, that’s what they’re doing. Like Mummy said once. So I asked for her room, and you were. Daddy, I despise you. D’you understand? I don’t want to see you again.’

She turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. Matt wanted to rush after her, hold her, rock her as he used to when she was smaller, tell her that everything was going to be… But it wasn’t. And she was right.

‘I did warn you,’ Sue commented briskly. ‘I only hope your visit hasn’t set her back. The doctor said she was to be kept quiet and allowed to adjust at her own pace. When’s the funeral?’

‘Funeral?’ He was startled.

‘Helen’s,’ she said patiently. ‘I imagine you’ll be there. If Jenny insists on going, it’ll be unavoidable that you two…’

Matt tried to explain that Helen’s body was still at Westport, together with the others who’d died there. Since the town had been evacuated, there was no question of arranging funerals or anything else. But Sue didn’t seem to understand. She repeated her question slowly, trying to get through to him.

‘How d’you mean, no funeral? Of course Helen must have a funeral.’ It sounded more like an accusation than a statement, implying that she’d always known Helen had married beneath her but there were family standards to be upheld. ‘It’s your duty to start making decent arrangements as soon as you possibly can.’

He was hardly listening to her. Through the window he’d just seen someone on a pony galloping across the meadow and jumping the hedge at the far end. ‘Isn’t that Jenny?’

‘Where? Oh! Oh, now you’ve done it!’ she snapped. She tugged the window open. ‘Jenny! Jenny, come back!’

‘She mustn’t go on the moor!’ Matt cried.

He ran out of the house to the Landrover, started the engine and reversed to get out of the drive, grazing the side of the Volvo estate. Luckily the road was clear. He shot along it, taking the first turning off to the left, a narrow lane, and praying it would lead in Jenny’s direction. It skirted the meadow
where the second pony was patiently chewing; then the hedges grew high and he could see nothing more. The lane began to wind and twist; he lost all sense of where he was heading till suddenly it joined a wider road and he found himself on the very edge of the moor, fairly high up, with a good view of the farmland behind him.

Jenny was nowhere to be seen.

Leaving the door of the Landrover open, he balanced on the sill to give himself extra height and searched the countryside through his binoculars. Cows, trees … a house … the rooftop of … yes, that must be Sue’s house… But no Jenny. She could be concealed among the trees somewhere, or maybe she’d reached the moor first and…

But it was hopeless. She could be anywhere.

Half a mile or so up the road he spotted a phone box. He drove up to it and called Sue, thinking that Jenny might have changed her mind and gone back. No answer. He rang Fran at the hotel, told her what had happened and asked her to wait there; he’d get in touch the moment he had any news. Then he tried Sue again, but there was still no reply.

The next hour he spent driving through the network of lanes between the moor and Sue’s house, stopping at every gate to peer into the fields beyond, enquiring of the one or two people he met if they’d seen a girl on a pony, or without a pony, a ten-year-old girl with long blonde hair down to her shoulders…

At last he found himself back at the phone box and once again dialled Sue’s number. She was at home. ‘Have you found Jenny?’ he asked anxiously the moment she answered.

No, she hadn’t. She’d been out on foot and in the car, but there was no trace of her. She’d rung all their friends, places where she might go, but they hadn’t seen her either. If she’d gone on to the moor… Well, it wasn’t the first time she’d stayed here and the pony knew its way home, but it was very worrying. She’d been thinking of calling the police.

Matt said she should remain where she was in case Jenny returned. He’d ring her every hour or so, but in the meantime he’d organize a search. Then he got on to Fran again, explained the situation and asked her to call the Ministry.

Within fifteen minutes he was back at the hotel where he found her putting on her protective overalls and flying boots. The Ministry had responded immediately, she said. They’d contacted the Navy and a helicopter was on its way. If Jenny was anywhere on the moor they’d have a better chance of spotting her from the air.

‘It’s not far across the fields from Sue’s house,’ he reasoned as he changed his clothes. This time he wore his skin-diving suit under the overalls. Better safe than sorry. ‘It’s much farther round by road.’

They were outside selecting the gear they needed from the Landrover when the large Navy helicopter arrived, its down-draught swirling litter and dust into the air as it landed on the level patch of moorland opposite the hotel. A brisk young officer jumped out smartly and introduced himself.

‘Lieutenant Smythe,’ he said with a quick salute. His keen blue eyes rested on each of them in turn, summing them up. ‘How can we help you?’

With Lieutenant Smythe and the pilot was a tough-looking leading seaman who leaned out through the open door to give them a hand up. He commented that they’d all three encountered worms before – ‘And put a few out of their misery’ – while evacuating the more isolated villages along the coast, so they knew what to expect. They’d brought a variety of armaments with them, including a box of grenades, a couple of automatic rifles and a flame-thrower.

‘Hit ’em with everything we’ve got, that’s my philosophy!’ the lieutenant bawled as they swooped across the moor, keeping the road in sight till they reached the phone box Matt had used earlier.

They began a methodical search of the moor and the bordering farmland. Twice they thought they’d found her but a closer look through binoculars proved them wrong. In the fields they saw several horses and ponies; they went down low to make sure she hadn’t dismounted or been thrown. But there was no sign of her.

After half-an-hour or more they landed in the meadow behind Sue’s house, scaring the one remaining pony into galloping to the far corner where two hedges met. There it stood
trembling its wordless objections at them. Matt ran over to the gate where Sue met him, eyeing the helicopter and his space-era clothing with equal dislike.

‘She’s not back?’

‘No.’ She looked more annoyed than worried. ‘She’s gone off somewhere to be alone for a couple of hours. There’s no need to panic. I’ve been thinking it over. Helen was just the same as a girl. She’d disappear for hours on end. Always turned up again when she was hungry.’

‘In those days there were no worms about.’ He left her standing there by the gate and loped back to the helicopter whose blades were still turning with a slow, steady rhythm. When he’d scrambled on board, he said: ‘Let’s concentrate on the moor now. Maybe she got farther than we thought.’

They took off once again and almost hedge-hopped towards the moor. Nowhere did they see either a rider on a pony or a child on foot. The constantly-broadcast warnings were having their effect, and people were keeping their children indoors. On the moor itself even the usual sheep were missing. It was in one of its sombre moods. Here and there the sun broke through the clouds to bring the yellow furze to life or emphasize the darkness of the black mud. The oil pipeline cut across it like a wound on those long stretches where it was above the surface.

‘Something down there!’ exclaimed Fran, pointing.

‘I saw nothing.’ The lieutenant squinted through his binoculars. ‘But let’s go round again, just in case.’

The pilot swung the helicopter round, then slowed down, hovering above the spot. The bog-grass and rushes danced violently beneath them.

Matt adjusted the focus of his own binoculars, trying to get a sharper image of the object. ‘What is it?’

‘A dead pony,’ Lieutenant Smythe judged. ‘Forelegs stuck in the mud, head partly obscured by vegetation. Lots of ponies on this moor.’

‘But it might be Jenny’s!’ Fran’s voice was sharp.

‘Can’t see her!’ The lieutenant called back above the insistant engine, but he gave the pilot a sign to go lower.

Indicating what appeared to be a firmer patch of ground a
few yards away, the pilot took the chopper towards it. As he came down the lieutenant, armed with one of the rifles, sprang out as if he were on a combat mission.

‘Okay!’ he yelled, waving.

Matt followed him. It was a bald expanse of moor where the soil and moss barely covered the smooth granite. Towards the west, moorland and cloud dissolved into each other.

The dead pony lay just below them about two hundred yards away, its hide apparently undamaged. Beyond it was some low shrub, and then one of the smaller tors looking like a man-made tower of massive rock-slabs rising gauntly out of the ground.

‘I’m going down there,’ Matt decided on impulse. ‘Alone.’

‘What d’you expect to find?’ the lieutenant enquired. ‘No worms anywhere near that pony. Died of natural causes, I imagine. But if you’d like us to accompany you, that’s why we’re here.’

‘I’d prefer you all up here. Any sign of worms—’

‘I’ll fire a shot,’ the lieutenant told him. ‘And here – use this radio if you need help.’

Matt nodded and began to make his way off the broad granite shoulder to the softer ground, deliberately ignoring Fran’s unspoken pleas to go with him. He could still observe a good area of moorland around him – his greater height gave him that advantage over the others – but it was treacherous underfoot and he was forced to move slowly. Playing safe, he took a step at a time, from one tussock of grass and rushes to the next.

It helped him, too, to feel that the others were still up there by the helicopter, watching him, though he was too busy to look back in their direction.

One more little island and…

Yes, he was right. He could see only the tail of the worm protruding from the dead pony’s side but that luminescent green was unmistakable. Slowly it wriggled back till he saw its head emerge, grasping a large piece of raw meat in its jaws. As it withdrew he spotted a second worm, then a third. No wonder they’d not noticed them from a distance. They were all entering
from underneath the carcase, or from the side, into the soft under-belly.

But they weren’t eating. He watched them closely to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. No, he was right – they were taking the food away! Relays of worms, each about the size of those which had originally attacked him in the sewers, were approaching the body to fetch mouthfuls of meat and carry it off into the undergrowth.

So far they hadn’t observed him. He held well back and began to move as quietly as he could from one islet to the next, trying to keep them in sight. On every other occasion they’d always eaten on the spot, so why were they behaving differently now?

He reached firmer ground and was able to get closer. Two lines of worms, squirming across the balding rock near the foot of the tor, busily going to and from their food source… He followed them round the base of the tor, carefully, still making sure he didn’t get too close.

At the side of the tor he saw them head for what appeared to be a bright green quilt laid out on the ground, quite flat and about ten feet across. It was a beautiful thick, soft layer of moss and as treacherous as the worms themselves. The moment he saw it he felt sick in his stomach. If Jenny had come this way and thrown herself down on it to rest, not realizing that she’d sink to her death in the muddy ooze underneath…

As he watched, the matted moss on the surface broke and a head rose above it, the head of the largest worm he’d ever seen. Its eyes were partly closed, its features bloated. Though he couldn’t see its full length, its neck alone must have been almost a foot in diameter. Oblivious of his presence, it laid its head on the edge of the green quilt and opened its mouth lazily to be fed.

A gasp came from behind him – Fran! She clutched his arm and whispered something, but too low for him to understand. He knew they had only to make the wrong move and the worms would turn on them. This giantess – he was convinced it was female – had probably laid eggs in the mud; this could be the only reason why the others were feeding her. She was like a queen termite in the centre of a colony: protected, but also
co-ordinating the tasks of her offspring, sending out those waves of intelligence he’d so often experienced. A queen worm, the telepathic centre of her empire.