Blood Worm

2

‘Kath’s disappeared!’

Guy Archer had arrived home from the office late and in a foul mood, only to be greeted by his wife Dorothea’s worried statement. Before he had even put down his briefcase she had launched into a detailed rigmarole about how their eleven-year-old daughter had gone off to play after school, nothing strange about that, of course, nor in not coming back for tea — but once it began to get dark that was a different matter, wasn’t it?

Wearily he agreed that it was.

‘It isn’t like Kath. She’s always home before dark.’

‘She must be at some friend’s house, surely. Have you phoned around?’

‘Everybody. All her friends from school and her ballet class. Guy, we must do something!’

‘Kath’s level-headed. She’s sensible.’ More so than her mother, he thought.

‘Then why isn’t she home?’

‘Maybe she’s as fed up as I am!’ he snapped incautiously, his patience paper-thin that evening. The stripped woodwork was still waiting to be painted, the carpet rolled up, the floorboards bare. ‘This place isn’t exactly comfortable, is it?’

She snorted, but without replying. They’d had this argument a dozen times before. ‘Guy, you’ve got to go and look for her. Now listen, I’ll tell you where she might be.’

He had spoken more sharply than he intended, but that evening he was in one hell of a bad mood. His mouth tasted foul from too much wine at that disastrous business lunch when everything had gone wrong; his head ached at the memory of it. They had lost the big contract, of course — that went without saying — and the responsibility' was his, though the directors were being generous. He must have made every mistake in the book. Here he was, a month away from his thirty-sixth birthday, having thrown away his regular-army commission a year earlier to get his foot on the ladder in the business world before he was too old — and what had happened?

A total balls-up.

We need your sort of experience, the directors had flattered him in their headhunting interviews when he was still in uniform: A levels, B.Sc. from a trendy new-style university, then Sandhurst, service in Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Germany, the Falklands, where he’d picked up that scar across his right temple: it all added up to an impressive CV.

Impressive?

Christ, any eighteen-year old straight out of school could have put up a better performance.

Any babe in arms.

The trouble with the Army, he thought, was that it was too bloody innocent. It didn’t prepare you for human duplicity. It kept you isolated from what went on in the world.

It had been the Army which had put him through university. Straight after A-levels he’d taken a leaflet from one of their recruiting stands and filled in the coupon, not telling anybody, not even his family, until after he’d passed the medical. Financially he’d been better off than other students and his only military duties had been a few hours’ training corps drill each week plus camp in the vacations.

After three years — once he’d picked up a decent science degree — the Army increased the pressure, subjecting him to intensive square-bashing, weapon instruction, assault courses, survival exercises (two men from his batch failed this part and Guy was one of those detailed to be a pall-bearer) and lectures on tactics, until finally he found himself commissioned as a lieutenant.

He imagined he knew it all, and so — in a way — he did: how to kill with a gun, with a knife, with his bare hands, even; how to stay aiive for days on end on a storm-racked mountainside; everything except how to detect the untruths behind a smooth tongue. God, he’d been so bloody naive, it was unbelievable!

Even after his Northern Ireland stint — his descent into hell, he called it — which had brought him promotion to captain, even after the Falldands and his weeks in hospital, he still kept his innocence. The Army had no training programme for the type of jungle warfare he was now encountering in the business world. Computers, yes; technology, yes; but that was the sum of it.

What made him really sick was the realisation that his company had been deceived all along the line. In good faith they had tendered to organise the computerisation — hardware, software, the whole package — of all customer interface operations of a national retail chain, and sent their top specialists to attend the pre-planning sessions, providing all the preliminary advice demanded, only to discover too late that the final contract was to go to another company. Japs, at that.

‘Guy, are you listening to me?’ Dorothea demanded furiously, cutting across his thoughts. ‘You’re not listening!’

‘Yes I am, love.’

At that she flared up, yelling that if anything was wrong with their marriage, he was to blame, not her. God knew she’d tried hard enough! She rued the day he’d ever left the Army, throwing up a good career, because he’d been quite impossible to live with since.

All of which was probably true, but he was in no state of mind to admit it. He fetched his leather jacket, out of habit thrust a torch into his pocket, and declared he was going out to search for Kath.

‘What about the police?’ Dorothea bellowed at him, every fold quivering with anger. She had always been well-fleshed — it still attracted him — but these days she was putting on even more weight. ‘Am I to call them or not?’

‘I don’t know.’ He hesitated. ‘Why not try her friends again first, then the police if you’ve no luck? Doro-love, I’m sure she’s with one of her friends.’

A quick peck to reassure her, then he escaped.

Part of the trouble was that it was a mixed district: decaying Georgian houses, each with a flight of worn steps in front and a yard at the rear. No gardens, nowhere for the kids to play except in the street among the parked cars and builders’ skips. Cheap lets, most of the flats; though a growing number of houses were being expensively reconverted into smart family dwellings. Their own house had been Dorothea’s lucky find, and mainly her money too; in his opinion, moving here had been a mistake, but that was something she’d never admit.

He decided to try Worth Road first. It was the main shopping street, from which all other roads radiated like so many ribs, and an obvious place for kids to congregate. The yellow glare from the harsh sodium lighting lent it a spurious air of excitement, daubing the red London buses with a death-like tinge.

Outside the neon-illuminated amusement arcade a group of black-clad bikers were noisily revving their engines. As he approached they roared off through the traffic, leaving the pavement strewn with discarded fried chicken cartons and coke cans.

But Kath was not in the amusement arcade, neither among the one-armed bandits, nor playing Star Wars. He experienced a pang of disappointment, having been convinced this was where she might be. Moving on, he glanced quickly into McDonald’s, then two smaller cafes. Even into the Plough.

No sign of her.

Nor in the Asian grocer’s, which was still open; nor in the Chinese takeaway.

On the comer he stopped to think it through. Apart from computer games at which she regularly beat him, Kath’s only real passion was ballet, so might she not simply be hanging round the hall where she went for her classes? It made sense.

The ballet school had taken over an unwanted church hall in a gloomy, down-at-heel street backing on to the railway line. He found the place in darkness. The door was firmly locked but there was a bell-push, which he pressed. From the depths inside he heard the bell ringing, but no one came to answer it. With the aid of his torch he deciphered the pale lettering on the noticeboard and discovered this was the only weekday when there were no evening classes.

At first Guy had simply felt irritated when Dorothea told him Kath was missing; he assumed she had merely forgotten the time, the way kids do. But now he was distinctly uneasy. How little they really knew about their own child, he thought. They had no idea what she was like away from her parents. Was she easily led by other people? Easily scared?

Then he had one of those sudden hunches that can twist a man’s guts into tight knots. Farther along the same street was a cul-de-sac which led to the disused church school — St John’s, or some such name. Hadn’t he heard stories of kids playing in there? Drugs.. sex…?

Jesus, be prayed he was wrong!

It was no man’s land, that cul-de-sac, its houses boarded up awaiting demolition, the air stinking of urine and decaying garbage, the street-lamps smashed, all but one at the far end. His feet crunched over broken glass as he picked his way along.

‘Kath?’ he called tentatively. ‘Kath, are you there?’

No response.

He reached the school, a Victorian structure with pointed gables outlined sombrely against the amber haze of the urban night sky. Over the doors and windows old sheets of corrugated iron had been nailed; even in the weak light of his torch it was obvious where the comers had been bent back to make it possible to climb in. The largest gaps he found were at the main entrance, which consisted of two separate doorways side by side with the words BOYS and GIRLS cut into the stone lintels above them.

Guy leaned in. ‘Kath?’ he shouted. ‘Are you hiding in there?’

His voice echoed through the building, but there was no reply. Carefully he climbed in, cursing as he caught his leg against a protruding nail. He found himself in the cloakroom area and played the light of his torch over the rows of low hooks where generations of children had hung their coats: generations of unwashed, sweating, sneezing, coughing, farting kids, who had all contributed towards that characteristic smell which lingered, ingrained in the woodwork. From his own schooldays he remembered it; and from the ancient drill halls and barrack rooms which were still pan: of the War Office establishment.

‘Kath?’

Still no answer. Yet she might be here, lying injured, perhaps. He had to make certain.

It was pitch dark inside and his torch was not too effective. Searching the cloakroom section was a slow business but he did it thoroughly, satisfying himself that Kath was not there before going on to the first classroom which — if anything — seemed even darker. Keeping to the wall, he stumbled against some obstruction which rattled alarmingly. As he shone his torch on it, he saw it was an old blackboard suspended on pulleys enabling it to be raised and lowered within its wooden frame. It was covered with obscene graffiti, aerosol work, evidence that at least some kids had been there.

He swung the torchlight away from it, intending to continue his search, and in that moment he spotted the first beetle. It stood absolutely still: a pink, oval body with dark green and yellow spots. Approximately one inch long, he estimated, with claw-like mandibles — also green — extending perhaps another half inch: not its most attractive feature. In all his travels he had never before seen anything resembling it.

Except perhaps a stag-beetle, he thought; not with that colouring, though. It looked dangerous.

That made it all the more urgent for him to find Kath. If she were lying hurt somewhere and one of these chappies came along… He shuddered as he looked at those claws. ‘Kath!’ he tried once more. ‘Ka-a-ath! Ka-~’

Her name died on his lips as he realised a second beetle was watching him, definitely watching him, its hard body gleaming faintly in the torchlight. Others too came scurrying towards him in the darkness. He was acutely conscious of a whispering, scraping sound as they moved.

‘This is ridiculous!’ he said aloud. He felt definitely uneasy. Uncertain of himself. Yet they were only ordinary beetles, after all — weren’t they? ‘Ordinary bloody beetles!’

But were they? There were so many of them.

None had yet come close to him — the nearest were about three feet away — but in the torchlight he could see how they were grouped in an almost perfect half-circle around him, wall to wall, as if to block his escape. All facing him, not in disciplined lines, of course; there was plenty of creeping about going on, crawling over each other. Nevertheless, he could swear they were deliberately keeping him under observation.

‘For Chrissake, pull yourself together, man!’ Guy muttered, his army training reasserting itself.

He took a step towards them, expecting them to scatter. Instead, one darted forward and mounted his shoe, exploring the naked leg above his sock where the nail had scratched him. Before he could get rid of it, several more joined it.

Suddenly they were swarming all over him.

‘Bloody hell!’ he swore, bending down in an attempt to knock them away.

It was then he felt the first nips. The pain was intense, as if someone were cutting into his flesh with a jagged saw. He grabbed one and it struggled between his fingers, tightening its grip on him till he was gasping in agony. As he squeezed that hard body, a vile stench enveloped his mouth and nostrils; coughing, retching, he managed to tug the beetle clear but its claws remained hanging feebly from his blood-stained sock, which only attracted more beetles.

Some flew at him, taking off for a short crazy flight to alight on his clothes, on his hair, their extended mandibles clawing into the leather of his jacket, into the skin of his neck, the lobe of his ear…

‘Jesus!’

What came from his throat was no more than a croaking whisper. He thought he’d known fear in the Falklands… in Northern Ireland… but never anything like this. Desperately he tried to brush them away, recoiling, reeling, shielding his eyes against them, aware of the pain.. the blood…

He had to get out. His training took over, his mind sharpened. There was only one way, so why hesitate? He had to force himself to do it.

Hordes of pink, menacing beetles still covered the floorboards between him and the door he could see just faintly beyond them. He straightened up and strode purposefully through them, marching as if on parade, compelling his mind to concentrate on that one objective. Their hard exoskeletons cracked and squelched beneath his feet. The vile, acrid smell returned, catching in his throat, making every breath an effort.

From out of the darkness more beetles came flying against him with a rapid whirring of invisible wings, but he staggered on, his shoes slipping over the slimy body-pulp. They were crawling around his ears… exploring his nostrils… slithering down inside his jacket… up his sleeves.. biting wherever they found flesh.

‘Kath!’ he roared helplessly, realising he couldn’t take much more; he was almost on his knees. ‘Kath, for God’s sake shout if you’re here!’ He spat one out of his mouth.

Then — unexpectedly, unbelievably — he broke out of the half-circle and reached the door, though the beetles were still all over him. Grabbing the doorframe to steady himself, he drew a deep breath. His face was dripping blood, he knew; he could feel it trickling down his neck. Tentatively he touched his skin, found the beetle just beneath his jaw and with a snort of repugnance he tugged it off.

Get out, his mind told him dully. Can’t stop here.. had it if you stop here…

But this was the wrong doorway, leading not the way he’d come in, but into another classroom. His torchlight flickered unsteadily; he could scarcely stand any longer. Slowly, wearily, the ideas taking shape only reluctantly in his mind, he began to understand what that foul smell was doing to him. It must be some sort of defence mechanism… a tranquillising poison used to lower their victims’ resistance.

Got to master it, he thought. Question of will-power. Kill the buggers one by one. Then get out of here. Out.

Carefully he let go of the doorframe, transferring the torch to his left hand. The veering light-beam revealed a sight which left him momentarily motionless with shock, as if a massive electric voltage had suddenly pulsed through him.

On the low patform before the blackboard lay a man’s body spreadeagled like so much carrion, its face destroyed — all but the accusing eyes — and its abdomen open to the air, exposed, while several long, pale snakelike creatures appeared to be feeding on it with slobbering mouths.

‘ U-u-uh/’ he gasped, recoiling at the horror of it, his stomach turning over.

Nothing he had experienced in action in the Army had prepared him for that terrible charnel-house vision. His torch rolled across the floorboards as he staggered backwards into the darkness, all reason gone from his tortured mind. Blindly he collided with some invisible object which seemed to give way; then he heard the rending and groaning of collapsing timber; the air filled with an abrasive sour dust which choked up his nostrils, and he realised the room was tumbling around him.

He felt a blow across his shoulders. He was falling: a long slow free fall.. arms and legs spread.. sky a pure black… a rich, velvet blackness which gently… so very gently.. absorbed him.