Blood Worm

10

‘Proceed, to Red Lion public house, comer of Hill Street…’

The panda car radio was never silent for long at that time in the evening but Police Constable Reed listened with only half an. ear as he manoeuvred through the impatient traffic and headed for Worth Road. He felt he’d earned his supper break after sorting out those rowdies who had been upsetting the owners of an Indian takeaway. No a..Tests, not this time; just the sight of the uniform and a firm word of warning: he’d been surprised himself how easy it had been. Little more than kids really, overgrown kids who were not yet accustomed to their newly acquired, muscle and gruff voices. Now he was looking forward to a cup of tea and a bite to eat in the canteen. Perhaps pie and chips. Something to set him up for the night.

Then the radio' voice — it was Meg this evening, Constable Meg Beamish, the divisional heart-throb — called his number. He reached for the microphone to acknowledge.

‘Proceed to Worth Hall. Investigate reported snakes. 999 call broken off. Receiver not replaced. Over.’'

‘You did say snakes? Over.’

‘That’s right, snakes. Repeat snakes.’

Must be a hoax, he thought. Snakes — well, that was at least original. Fire was the hoaxer’s favourite; or, these days, a bomb. He’d never come across snakes before.

Switching on his siren, he had the satisfaction of seeing the traffic part in front of him like the waters of the Red Sea. A few minutes later, passing the police canteen block, he felt a twinge of irritation at the hoaxer; if he got in too late he’d find all the pies gone.

From outside, Worth Hail showed no sign of anything wrong. Most of the lights were still on, though through t he uncurtained windows the building had a bare, empty look. Pity, really; it must have been a nice house in its day, while people still lived in it, he thought. He drove around to the back but there was no one about; certainly no disturbance of any kind.

He returned to the main entrance at the front, got out of the car and went up the steps to ring the night bell. No one came to open the heavy door, so he rang again and hammered against one of the panels in case the bell was out of order. Retreating back down the steps he surveyed the brightly lit windows. Nobody visible.

Going back to the car, he unclipped his microphone and called up the station to report. Tokyo Meg — as someone had dubbed her, and the name had stuck — replied crisply that Sergeant Taylor had fresh instructions for him.

‘Jack, we’re sending someone over with a key,’ came the sergeant’s voice. ‘Do not attempt to enter the building alone. I repeat, do not attempt entry. There’s a car on its way now with back-up. Over and out.’

His chances of a hot pie that night were rapidly receding, he thought glumly; by the time he got back the chips would be dried up again, too. For what? A stupid hoax? Some schoolboy prank? Unless…

He went back up the steps and tried the bell once more. In a public building of this size, there must be at least one man on duty all night, so why the hell didn’t he answer?

‘An don’t give me that crap about snakes,’ he muttered aloud. ‘Not in London.’

This time he heard something moving inside. Not footsteps though, but something more… He pondered, listening as the odd sound started afresh. A heavy object being dragged across a floor? A sack perhaps? A carpet?

‘Anybody in there?’ he shouted, banging at the door. ‘Open up! Police!’

Instead of a reply, a loud creaking noise came from the depths of the building. It was followed by a crash, which was so violent that the windows seemed to rattle in their frames. He recoiled down the steps to the tarred driveway, half-expecting the portico to collapse on top of him, but it remained solidly in place as though nothing had happened.

The office strip lights, visible through the bare windows, were rocking gently on their chains; otherwise nothing seemed to have changed. No broken windows. No cracks in the walls. He went farther back — as far as he could — to take a look at the upper windows and the roof, arguing to himself that if an inside floor had collapsed, the obvious cause might be fire.

No smoke, though. No flames; not even the smell of burning.

Much to his relief, he heard the sirens of the approaching police cars and a minute later they were drawing up on the drive next to him. Sergeant Taylor was the first to get out.

‘Anything happened, Jack?’

Constable Jack Reed told him about the crash which had shaken the whole building. ‘Not an explosion,’ he added. ‘More like a floor collapsing, if you ask me.’

‘What-about round the back?’

‘I took a look when I got here. Not since. No sign of a break in, though; not that I could see.’

By the size of the team the sergeant had brought with him he must have rounded up everyone in the canteen, he thought: four men plus the new policewoman who’d been transferred to their division only a couple of weeks earlier. Serita, her name was, he remembered; Indian girl with soft dark eyes. With them was a blonde woman wearing a pale raincoat, her face tired and drawn. From what she said, it seemed she held a key to a side door.

‘Serita and Bill, you two take a peek round the back,’ the sergeant ordered. He was dearly not in the best of moods. ‘If you find anything, use your radio. Don’t attempt to deal with it on your own. Duncan, you stay here to keep an eye on the main door. The rest come with Miss Armstrong and me.’

‘There should be two men on duty inside the woman in the raincoat explained without bothering to introduce herself, but he remembered the public health officer was a Miss Armstrong, wasn’t she? The one Detective-Sergeant Evans was so struck on?

She led them to one of the Victorian wings, then down a short flight of steps to a locked door which she said gave access to the public health laboratories in the basement.

‘I should go in first. I know where the light switches are.’

Her voice sounded unsteady and he realised she must be highly strung. Well, they had all heard what happened at that house overran by beetles, but surely she didn’t expect any in her own department’s offices?

‘Just tell me where to switch on, miss,’ the sergeant reassured her. ‘You stay out here.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, sergeant,’ she told him tartly. ‘I can’t have you stumbling around in the dark kicking things over.’

Pushing in front of him, she inserted the key in the lock and turned it, then waited for a second with her hand on the door knob. ‘When 1 go in, don’t crowd roe,’ she said. ‘I hate being crowded.’

Which was another way of saying they should keep the doorway clear in case she had to beat a hasty retreat, Jack thought. Were these beetles really that dangerous, then? He’d heard they could kill, but surely if they were spotted in time…?

Miss Armstrong held out her hand for Ms torch, switched it on, then quietly opened the door and went inside. A moment later the lights were on and the sergeant joined her in the corridor. Jack followed him in.

No sign, of damage inside, just a row of closed doors, which turned out to be locked when he checked them. Against one of the walls — probably in contravention of fire regulations — was a pile of cardboard cartons bearing the name of a firm of laboratory suppliers.

‘Welt!’ site said brighdy, not disguising her relief. ‘So fax so good. Everything seems quite norma! down here. Now I’ll show you up to the reception area. There’s a staircase at the far end.’

‘Miss Armstrong, thank you very much for your help.’ The sergeant took over firmly. ‘Now if you’ll just wait outside and leave this to us. The stairs are along here, you said?’

ill go at least that far with you.’

‘Outside,’ he repeated. ‘Please.’ i’ll be in this office if you need me. Now I'm here there’s some work I can be getting on with.’

From her shoulder bag she took another bunch of keys and unlocked the door marked GENERAL OFFICE, jack saw the resigned look on the sergeant’s face and thought it best to say nothing. They couldn’t force her to leave her own office, and the whole thing might still turn out to be a hoax.

The sergeant called in the other two constables from outside. They were to go with him up to the reception area, he ordered, while Jack was to stay and keep an eye on things in the basement corridor. ‘OK, Jack?’

‘OK,’

Sergeant David Taylor knew that he ought to have consulted a doctor weeks ago about the pain in his side, but as usual he’d ignored it, hoping it would go away of its own accord. It hadn’t, of course. That evening it was giving him hell. He had to force himself to keep moving just to stay alert.

He found the narrow stairs described by Miss Armstrong and went up first, with the two young constables following immediately behind. Good lads, they seemed, and well able to look after themselves in a rough-house. They had only recently joined the division, during the great upheaval initiated by the new super, and as yet he’d hardly had time to get to know them.

Near the top of the stairs he paused to peer cautiously around the comer, uncertain what to expect but already aware of a sour dusty smell in the air, like a demolition site.

‘Bloody hell!’ he exploded when he saw the mess.

Where the old ornate staircase had stood there was now only a high pile of fallen timbers, with beams and sections of broken-off bannisters sticking out in all directions, resembling some gaunt modem sculpture. Miraculously, the lights were still burning, though the air was hazy with dust, and he could see that the collapsing stairs had brought down part of the ceiling with them as well as some of the joists, leaving a gaping hole where the first-floor landing had been. The reception counter was smashed, and the area behind it lay under rubble.

‘Right, both of you now!’ He snapped out his orders. ‘Two men were on duty in here and they may still be alive. Don’t take any risks. Watch yourselves!’

As the constables brushed past him, spreading out to examine the perimeter of the damage, he undipped his personal radio. The pain in his side sharpened as he began to speak, leaving him gasping for breath. Recovering a little, pressing his hand over the spot in an attempt to relieve the agony, he tried again. He should be in hospital, he realised; he was putting men’s lives at risk.

‘A-ah..

He was starting to call up Tokyo Meg to request emergency services when he saw the beetles scampering towards him across the floor. His voice dried up at the sight of them. They were large pink creatures with flexing claws, a whole army of them purposefully approaching him, and in that split second he at last understood what all the panic was about. He recoiled before them, longing to turn and run.

Then his years of self-discipline took over. He brought the microphone up to his mouth, pressed the switch and began again. Already beetles were swarming over his shoes and socks… biting into his ankles… penetrating up his trouser leg as high as his calves… his knees… his thighs…

Their sharp claws cut through his flesh, but he remained stock-still while he delivered his message.

\.. over and out!’ he finally signed off, and the radio dropped from his hand. He began slapping his clothes and stamping on his attackers in an effort to fight them off.

‘Jones! Phillips!’

Where the hell were those constables? No sign of them when they were needed. Desperately he brushed the beetles away but there were too many of them. They were coming at him like a determined, unstoppable column of driver ants. Oh yes, he knew all about driver ants from when he’d served in the Kenya police. Strip the flesh from your bones, they could. Crushing them was no use, not in those numbers. This was his lot.. no escaping them… His mind was in a spin. These were ants, weren’t they? Or beetles? He no longer knew.

i no longer bloody know!’ he yelled out, sinking to his knees in a pool of his own blood. ‘Philips! Jones!’

One of the constables appeared — he couldn’t see which — and draped over him was a long, pale thing which he could swear must be a tapeworm, curling and squirming across the dark blue tunic.

But his eyes were misty, deceiving him, and the images multiplied, crossing and re-crossing each other in a drifting dance.

Now they were exploring his shirt, those beetle creatures, and testing the naked skin of his belly.

‘There.. there…,’ he begged as they reached the spot on his side where the pain was most intense. ‘That’s it! Right where it hurts! Bite into it… A-a-ahV

Christ, he thought, it was like hot knives — hot surgical knives slicing out the source of the pain. He surrendered himself to them, lying there with his legs awkwardly twisted beneath him, his blood easing out, and his thoughts whirling in a nonsensical dance with the red driver ants… the faces he’d known in Kenya… way back… way back… until the darkness came to swallow all.

Constable Jack Reed had just returned to the open doorway for a breath of fresh air when his old mate Constable Duncan Monroe came running across. They had done their training together, he and Duncan, though these days they didn’t see much of each other off duty.

‘Something odd’s going on in there,’ Duncan said tersely, ‘though God knows what. Did you hear his message?’

‘What there was of it. Fire brigade and ambulance, that’s all I got. Was there more?’

‘I dunno. Maybe his radio’s malfunctioning. I tried to raise him but he’s not answering.’

i’ll go and check. Stick around, will you, just in case.’

He sprinted down the corridor, found the narrow staircase and went up two steps at a time. Emerging into the reception area he stopped dead, dazed with shock. The place looked as though a bomb had hit it. Worse than that, the body of young Tim Jones lay spreadeagled on its back over a heap of fallen timber. Feeding on it — actually feeding on it — was a long snake. No, not a snake, he realised, but something more like a worm with a pale segmented skin the colour of liver sausage and pinkish patches. He knew right away what it must be. That man Archer who’d been attacked in the old school had cross-examined him about seeing snakes, and a few days later he and Tim Jones had gone in the panda car to bully that black kid into telling the truth.

Archer was right, though.

He stepped back, retreating towards the staircase and trying to avoid looking at the twisted remains of Sergeant Taylor, over which the vicious, clawed beetles were crawling like maggots over rotting meat. Somehow these beetles and the snakes belonged together, his mind told him dully, but he couldn’t understand why.

‘Duncan, d’you read me?’ he called on his personal radio.

‘Go ahead, Jack.’ it’s like a bloody battlefield. Cover me while I try to get out in one piece, will you? Use anything — fire hose-anything you can lay your hands on. But for Chrissake be quick.’

The beetles were ignoring him, perhaps because they were still busy with poor old Dave Taylor’s body; from the way they were chewing into him there’d not be much left for his widow to identify. But what about Bob Phillips, Jack wondered. He might be hiding somewhere, too scared to move. Couldn’t go off and leave Mm there, not if he were still alive.

‘Bob!*' he shouted, ‘Bob, it’s me — Jack! Give me a yell if you can hear me!’

He took a step or two farther in.

The giant worm paused in its feeding on, the dead constable and raised itself up to stare at the intruder — at least, he could have sworn that was its purpose — but it made no move to attack Mm. The more blood it drank, the more the pink patches on its skin seemed to be spreading, he noted; the mere thought of it made him feel sick.

"Bob! Can — you-hear — me?’ he bawled out again. ‘Bob!’

Looking around, it was like finding himself in the centre of one of those old illustrations of damnation filled with medieval terrors. He was more frightened than he’d ever thought possible, yet determined not to let it take over, Mo panic, that had always been his motto. Flay everything cool.

‘I’m ready for you, jack,’ came Duncan’s steady voice from the stairway. He was another one who’d still be ice-cold even in hell, Jack thought. ‘The Armstrong woman suggested the fire extinguisher. Said it’ll slow ’em down even if it doesn’t kill ’em. Can you make it over here?’

The beetles had moved, cutting him off from the entrance to the basement stairs. He stepped farther out into the middle of the corridor, intending to go around the sergeant’s body and reach the stairs from the other side, but immediately the beetles began to regroup.

‘Bloody hell, they seem able to read your mind!’ Duncan exclaimed when he saw what they were doing.

‘It’s more than that.’ Jack tried to speak calmly but his voice cracked. Hoarsely he.went on: ‘They’re getting ready to attack.’

Forty or fifty of them at least, he reckoned. If they all came at him at once he’d stand no chance.

‘Stand by,’ said Duncan, raising the nozzle of the fire extinguisher. ‘Let’s see if this thing has any effect.’

It was like a sudden snow storm as he sprayed the beetles with the compressed gas. They froze to the floor, glistening as the ice crystals formed, jack seized the moment and started, forward, intending to walk straight over them. Had he been wealing old-fashioned police boots he’d have mads it; as it was, these rubber composition jobs couldn’t get a grip on the ice and his foot gave way under him.

Duncan lowered the nozzle and came to help him; even as he was still falling jack realised it was a mistake. Above Duncan’s head, along a timber ledge at the top of the panelling, lay another of those pale giant worms.

‘Duncan!’ he screamed out in a desperate attempt to warn him. ‘For God’s sake, get clear!’

It dropped directly on to his shoulders, draping itself over him like a long scarf, then twisting its head upwards, its whole body rippling as it prepared to attack.

Duncan grunted with astonishment, his eyes bulging in terror as he dropped the fire extinguisher, which went bouncing and rolling down the stairs far out of reach. Hastily Jack tried to get up, but he was too slow. From behind he heard a movement; then something heavy thrashed against his back. A second later he felt a burning sensation on his neck, sharpening into an unbearable pain.

Then everything became vague, save for a crazy singing in his ears as his blood drained out. Something crashed down across him, a writhing, yelling body which was not his own. Oh no, because his own body was floating now, freely levitating above the rooftops.

Higher into the dark sky… higher… until the great cloud dispersed him, accepting him into itself.

It had been the note of urgency in the constable’s voice which brought Mary Armstrong out of the office to ask what was going on,

‘Beetles!’ His total bewilderment had been plain to see on his face. "What the hell can I use- against beetles?’

So she’d advised the fire extinguisher and started to explain the effect: on insects of a rapid drop in temperature. He hadn’t waited to hear her reasoning. Grabbing the nearest extinguisher, he’d dashed towards the stairs. She didn’t even have a chance to ask if anyone was hurt.

She knew exactly what she had to do and went about her preparations briskly. At the old school she’d gone to pieces at the sight of beetles, but all that was well in the past by now; this time she had total control over herself. What she needed was hard information, including photographs, to back up the report she’d been working on when Evan phoned her about the key. The department’s camera was ready to hand on the desk, freshly loaded.

But first she telephoned Guy.Archer, who had seen more of the beetles than anybody — which made him a useful witness; unfortunately, the only reply came from an answering machine. Leaving a message, she then dialled the number the inquisitive girl journalist had given her earlier in the day. This time she felt quite certain of herself; in fact, if she were to get her way she needed, the press on her side.

‘May I speak to Tessa Brownley?’ she requested when at last the call was answered.

‘Speaking.’

Mary gave no details — she knew none to give — but merely said there was an emergency'at Worth Hall and Tessa should get there as quickly as possible if she wanted a story for the national papers, That should be enough to get her moving, she thought as she put the receiver down.

Taking the camera with its flashlight attachment, she went towards the door, but then stopped.

‘God, I’m scared!’ she whispered aloud to herself.

Every time she even thought of beetles that same feeling returned.. that same uncontrollable nausea…

Going through the connecting door into the laboratory she found a bottle of ether, which she gingerly placed upright in her shoulder bag, using a thick wad of folded report forms to keep it in place. Anything was better than facing those creatures with empty hands, she decided.

The basement corridor was empty. Only the footprints left by the police’s rubber-soled boots on the polished floor reminded her that she was not alone in the building. Then, as she approached the narrow staircase — servants’ stairs in the old days — she heard a long-drawn-out bellow of anguish, probably coming from the area. It was followed by the clattering and banging of something heavy falling down the stairs. Not till it got to the bottom did she see what it was — the fire extinguisher.

Every instinct screamed to her to turn and run, to get out while there was still a chance. She stood there quivering with anxiety, biting her lip until it hurt, not able to make op her mind what to do.

‘Some scientist, you!’ she told herself scornfully. Disjointed memories flashed through her mind and they were so vivid, she almost cried out. Wasn’t this why she’d had to drop out of medical school — cowardice? Hadn’t she fainted at her first sight, even, of the severed human arm they had expected her to dissect? But she couldn’t go on through her whole life like this, could she?

Could she?

That afternoon, going into the house where those poor people had died, she had felt no qualms at all; but then the pest-control people had gone in first, hadn’t they? And she’d not been on her own, but part of a team.

But the police were still here, weren’t they? Doubtfully she looked down at the fallen fire extinguisher, and a sick feeling in her stomach told her what had almost certainly happened.

She placed a foot on the first stair… then the next… and one more… and…

‘No, it’s too late to go. back now/ she muttered, gripping the camera firmly. But she couldn’t help wondering at the sudden quietness at the top of the stairs. No voices, nor any of those strange groans and cracks she had heard earlier. ‘I need the photos,’ she added as she forced herself to go on. ‘I need the evidence.’

She reached the main floor, and a low moan of sheer terror escaped from her iips. The rains of the staircase and the public reception area were shocking enough in themselves; far worse was the vision of those horrifying serpents feeding on the tom bodies of the policemen who had brought her here only fifteen minutes ago. Four of them, she counted, though it was no longer possible to identify-their faces.

‘Right!

The sight of the carnage strengthened her, giving her a renewed sense of determination. She brought up the camera, adjusted the short, stubby zoom lens to give a sharp, close picture of the two snakes feeding on the body of the dead sergeant — recognisable only from the stripes on his tunic sleeve — and pressed the trigger button.

But they weren’t snakes at all, her mind told her feverishly as she went on to take one picture after another. The sharp image of them in the viewfinder of the SLR camera revealed exacdy what they must be. Apart from their size, they were identical with the tiny woodworm which had eaten into Tony’s hand at the workshop that morning.

Only this time they were flushed pink, gorged on the blood of their victims.

At the first lightning flashes from the camera they had reared up, proof — if she’d needed any — that they were not blind. Now they began to squirm across the floor towards her, six of them altogether, moving purposefully as if nothing could stop them. She could feel the tension building up inside her and longed to let everything go in one hysterical scream; instead, she disciplined herself to take one more picture, wide-angle, backing down a couple of steps to get them all in, before leaving the camera to swing from the leather strap around her neck while she groped in the shoulder bag for the ether bottle.

Struggling to get the rubber bung out — it was firmly wedged in the neck — she went down a couple more steps. The giant, blood-hungry worms came closer, wriggling forward very slowly now, but never pausing. What if she made a quick dash for it down the stairs while they were still sluggish? Should she risk it?

No.

No, she knew that sluggishness would drop away from them like a sloughed off skin. They would be after her the moment she turned her back, trapping her on the narrow staircase. She had only one chance; if she couldn’t open the ether bottle she’d have to break it.

That meant going back up those four steps, with the worms getting closer every second. Biting her lip, trying to keep a grip, she forced herself to do it. As she reached the top, the worms began to rear up expectantly, a dark fluid slobbering from their mouths as if in anticipation.

She raised her arm and, with all the strength she could summon up, smashed the bottle against the hard parquet flooring. A second later she was stumbling down the stairs as fast as she could, without waiting to find out how successful she’d been. The glass had at least cracked, she was sure of that; she’d heard the sound, and the whiff of ether had been unmistakable, but that was all she knew.

Somehow she got to the bottom of the stairs without falling and blindly ran along the basement corridor towards the outer door, slamming it shut the moment she was outside and hastily attempting to lock it.

As if — she told herself bitterly when her panic had again subsided — as if a mere wooden door, however thick, could stop those things coming through if they chose.

The sirens wailed urgently through the darkness but then abruptly cut out as the ambulance and fire tender entered the drive, followed by a police Rover. The sleek superintendent had come along in person, she saw, as the men got out with a slamming of doors and their heavy voices broke the eerie silence at last; she felt a quick surge of disappointment that Evan was not among them. At that moment she could have done with his steady, common-sense voice to reassure her.

‘Where’s Sergeant Taylor?’ the superintendent was demanding. ‘See if you can find him, somebody. He should be here.’

‘Your sergeant is dead,’ she announced bitterly. ‘They're all dead in there.’ She described the scene she had just left.

‘Who are you?’ He eyed her camera. ‘Press?’

‘I work here.’

‘Mary Armstrong, sir,’ one of the constables intervened. ‘Public Health Department. Sergeant Taylor was on his way to pick her up when he left the station.’

‘Very well, Miss Armstrong. Tell me exactly what we’re to expect when we go inside.’

Mary tried to persuade him against sending men into the building, but he refused to listen to reason, commenting only that ‘the men know their duty’ — whatever that might mean. To her knowledge, at least four were already dead and three missing, but that argument cut no ice with him. He questioned her in detail about the damage in the reception area and whether or not the main entrance was blocked, then went into conference with the fire brigade officer about the best way to tackle the problem. Her report about the giant worms or ‘snakes’ he merely pooh-poohed. ‘Pure hysteria,’ she overheard him saying.

The Indian WPC and the constable called Bill were also cross-examined* but they had been watching the back of Worth Hall most of the time and had no very clear idea of what had been going on.

A young fireman, obviously very worried, took Marv by the arm and spoke to her confidentially. ‘You mentioned beetles, is that right? And… snakes?’

‘They look like snakes, but they’re not. They’re more.. well, they resemble worms, only very much bigger.’ ‘That’s what I heard.’

She glanced at him sharply. ‘Heard?’

‘We’re from Hammersmith,’ he explained with a wave of his arm towards the fire tender. ‘Don’t know what’s up, but you’ve got crews from all over Greater London in this borough tonight. Real bloody disaster area this is. First it was the disco, jammed fill! of people, and the ceiling collapsed on top of the poor sods. Then there’s a fire at that pub opposite the tube station — some talk of beetles being seen there as well — not to mention the coach-load of OAPs involved in that multiple crash on the main road. I tel! you, lady, that radio’s on the whole time in my cab, and it hasn’t stopped all the way here, not once,’

‘And the worms, or snakes? What have you heard about them?’

‘Snakes and beetles — seem to belong together, don’t they? I dunno. I’ve been five years in the fire service, and I’ve never come across anything like this.’

‘Have any been reported at the disco?’

‘Christ knows what’s going on there. Talk about panic stations! The OAPs’ coach was the same, by all accounts.

A snake, they said. Caused the driver to swerve straight into a pantechnicon. Killed outright. Hell of a mess. They’re using cutting gear to get the old folk out.’

From Worth Hall came a deep, shuddering sound followed by a series of loud cracks and a sudden rush of falling masonry as if the entire building were about to fall down. The noise increased, becoming a long roar; the lights in the offices went out abruptly, leaving only the car headlamps to cut into the darkness.

Mary remained standing where she was, ignoring the fireman’s shouts that she should move farther back. She felt no sense of shock, not any longer, but only a quiet, hopeless despair. It was a major part of her job to deal with the hazards of insect infestation and vermin, but the usual procedures seemed so inadequate. A quick, staccato clattering told her that the roof slates had gone; one even shattered on the ground at her feet. Staring upwards, she could just make out the shapes of the rafters against the dark, amber-tinted sky.

Then a police searchlight came into play and she heard the gasps of fear around her as it illuminated the swarms of flying beetles emerging from the broken roof.

‘Bloody hell, what’s that?’ the young fireman muttered.

Despite the distance she could identify the pinkish sheen of their hard outer skeletons and that vague, veillike aura around them which was probably caused by their rapidly moving wings. A mating flight, she thought; wasn’t that the whole purpose of the beetles’ existence? They were the imago stage of the life cycle. It was their basic task to reproduce, laying their eggs in the minute hair-cracks of any suitable length of timber they could find, dozens of fertile eggs from every beetle couple, each generation multiplying many times over.

Bringing more buildings crashing down around them as they burrowed their way through the wood.

Gulping in the protein-rich blood of any human victim who ventured too close.

The fireman’s comforting hand was on her arm again, but then his fingers tightened. ‘Look!’ he breathed. ‘On the roof!’

Near the chimney-stack was a dark, moving form rearing up from one of the rafters. It reached upwards like an undulating tentacle, ten feet long at least. Everyone else saw it too, for there was a sudden murmur of curiosity mixed with apprehension.

‘One of your snakes, Miss Armstrong?’ The superintendent sounded less certain of himself. He snapped out an order. ‘Can’t you do better than that with the light? Robbins, give him a hand! Get some light on that thing.’ The beam moved slowly across the rooftop, finally nesting on the giant worm, which now seemed much bigger than she had previously thought. It was a deathly white. Its tail draped over several of the rafters, while its head appeared to be weaving about as if trying to find a way of escaping from the powerful light. Hastily Mary fumbled with the camera, setting aperture and shutter speed for maximum exposure, but before she could bring it up to her eye the creature had slowly withdrawn its entire length back into the building.

‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it?’ the fireman was stating firmly, i mean, that’s it! After that, you’ll not find any of our crew willing to go in there.’

Mary gazed up, still clasping the camera in the hope that the worm would reappear, however briefly. She was scarcely aware of yet another car arriving, nor of the door-slam when the driver got out and came over towards her.

‘Miss Armstrong, can you give me some explanation?’ A girl’s voice, but tense with barely controlled hostility. Mary looked round and recognised the young reporter from the local paper, Tessa Something-or-other.

She’d forgotten all about having phoned her.

‘No,’ she replied tersely.

The girl’s thin lips tightened at her answer, but what else was there to say?

‘No, I can’t,’ she repeated, despairing. ‘Believe me, I only wish I could.’