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and staining his white overalls. The prisoner's features were a fixed snarl
that depicted the ultimate in pain and terror, a scream that went on and on so
that you still heard it even though it was long finished. The eyes had
bloated, burst, the dead sockets streaming white fluid like thick sour milk
that was about to solidify into cheese; dilated nostrils discharging twin
rivulets of mucus that still flowed fast.
Still screaming, the dead brain rebelling in awful palpitations, a creature
that fought against what they had done to it even after life was gone from it.
Westcote almost fainted, wanted to look away but could not. Hypnotised. You
did this to me; look at me, watch me. No!
Suddenly he was aware that someone else had come into the room, the waft of a
white coat passing him, swift footsteps. Keep away, they're not dead yet!
It was Reitze. Westcote saw the scientist through a haze of revulsion,
despised him because he didn't back off and throw up. Kept watching him.
Reitze pushed his face close to the vibrating skull, studied it intently for a
few seconds. Oh God, he touched it, ran his fingers lightly over it in the way
a GP might have examined a patient with ague. Felt the pulse, the heart,
squeezed the penis and ejected a spurt of deep orange urine. Liquid excreta
splattered on to the floor at the same time.
Then he transferred his attention to the woman, plucked some hair from her
head as casually as though he was weeding couch grass from a herbaceous
border, pushed the head back. For fuck's sake, Reitze, I don't want to see her
face, too! He saw it all right, the expression similar to that of her
companion except that the eyes had not burst. They seemed to see, a dead gaze
that focused on Reitze. See what you've done to me, you bastard! The jaw
clicked open, expelled a groan, a release of trapped wind coming out in one
final curse and even from the doorway you smeiled her fetid breath.
Reitze let the head fall, stepped back and turned towards Westcote. The latter
read sheer contempt in his look, his eyes saying, 'You're no use to me if
you're going to shit yourself and throw up every lime an experiment goes
wrong.'
It had gone wrong all right. That was something you accepted, didn't get all
fired up about because there would be a next time. And a time after that. You
lost a lot, you just hoped that somewhere along the line you might win one',
the law of averages.
Watching, waiting. That skull beat was increasing, speeding up, you could see
the flesh being stretched to its limit, starting to tear. Splitting!
Westcote threw up again as he saw the bone beneath the rent skin crack, a
jagged gash that heaved up grey and green slime, spat it out as though the
tortured body was rejecting it forcibly. And then the cranium vibrations
ceased immediately as though somewhere they had been switched off. It was all
over. Finis.
'What . . . went wrong?' Westcote spoke, maybe to see if he stil! had his
power of speech, perhaps as an instinctive apology to Reitze because he had
given way to his terror. Only Reitze was impassive, immovable; he expected
everybody else to be the same.
'Nothing went wrong.' The same monotone, still staring at the hanging,
drooping corpses. 'That was a phase one experiment to find out how the brain
and the skin tissue reacted. We found out. Now we're ready for phase two.'
'Phase . . . two!'
'We need to discover how these throwbacks will react in extreme cold. They are
being driven from the towns into the countryside where there will be sparse
shelter. A few weeks and winter will be here. We don't have much time.'
Westcote swallowed. He'd seen a lot of Reitze's experiments in the past,
probably the best man in the States; he knew that the Professor had been under
close surveillance in case he defected to the Soviet Union. Not just a talent,
a ruthlessness that put him at the top of his field. If somebody or something
died as a result of an experiment it wasn't a failure, it was just a step
towards the goal he sought. Positive thinking. Inhuman. These two who hung
horribly lifeless from the whitewashed wall, they were just 'specimens'. A few
weeks ago they had been normal human beings, maybe a professional man, an
attractive housewife.
Now they were mutilated, festered corpses, no use to anybody. Not even a
mourner. No dignity.
'Get these two incinerated and the place cleaned out.' Reitze was scribbling a
few hurried pencil notes in his pocket notebook. Then tell Blaby that I shall
be requiring one of the deep-freeze compartments for further experiments.
He'll have to shift the food out of it to make space. And when that's done
we'll see how many degrees below these apes can survive at!'
Westcote nodded, swallowed, hated himself for not protesting. But it wouldn't
have done any good. Like the CND protesters a few years ago, voices in the
wilderness that went unheard. When you had worked with Professor Reitze long
enough you got to know that you either obeyed or you got your ass kicked right
out.
Reitze was watching the other carefully, guessed what he was thinking. He
heard Rankine's words again: These are our people, you know.' Not any fucking
more, they aren't!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JON QUINN felt autumn in the heavy rainshower. The difference between late
summer and the beginning of fall, as suddenly as that. He'd lost track of the
days and weeks, regretted not having marked them off on that dog-eared
calendar of Jackie's which hung from the knife rack over the working surface
in the kitchen. It was too late to start now but he judged that they were well
into September. The leaves would start to turn soon.
That guy was still watching him from the patch of thorn bushes up on that
hillside opposite; even if you couldn't actually see him you knew he was
there. He had moved well out of range since Jon had fired a barrel of the
shotgun in his direction, knew what to expect if he came any closer.
It was obviously the same fellow who had been mooching about after dark, one
of those who had come that night and looted the toolshed. Hell, there were
plenty of other places, deserted farms, why did he have to stick around here?
Just having him in the vicinity sent little shivers up and down Jon Quinn's
back. He couldn't understand it, the bastard wasn't out to steal anything now
because he had had the opportunity; he'd been in the buildings again and
hadn't taken anything.
Jon had stopped him for a time, used the electric fence which worked off an
old car battery, heard him howl with pain and shock the first night after it
was set up. But the battery had run down and he hadn't got another one. So he
had taken to padlocking the toolshed but the bugger still came. Maybe he was
harmless, just curious, but he was getting on Jon's nerves. No good going up
there after him because he was gone the moment you set foot in the field,
bounding up towards the forest skyline, hiding out
there. Still watching you. Well, he'd better keep his distance because Jon
never went anywhere without the twelve-bore these days.
Sylvia had had her trip into the village and she had not pestered him to go
anywhere since. The place had been deserted, everybody gone, or perhaps nobody
had ever lived there in the first place. It was getting difficult trying to
imagine a world where there was any kind of normality. Jon was getting used to
it, accepting it now. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]