Australian Hauntings: A Second Anthology of Australian Colonial Supernatural Fiction (18 page)

A duty we had neglected came to my mind, and I jumped from my chair and rushed to the phone.

“Exchange!” I yelled. “Are you there? Are you there?”

There was no answer, though I called again and again. My belated attempt at warning was useless.

“Death everywhere,” murmured Vidal.

“Or else the gels have scooted,” suggested Mayence. “Don’t be too infernally gloomy.”

“Perhaps it’s the beginning of the end for the human race,” persisted the little man.

“Rot!” cried Mayence. “It’s h
orribly bad, of course, but that couldn’t happen. A lot of damned insects!”

“And they’ll soon be settled,” said I. “Squirt acids or poisons on them, or—”

“Or set a dog at them,” sneered Vidal. “D’you think they’d stand still and let you do it? Look at the pace they can go. And they’ve got brains, I’m certain. What if this has all been arranged? Why, I’ll bet they’re all over the town—other towns, too; perhaps other countries.”

We cried out at this monstrous suggestion, yet—though, of course, we didn’t know it at the time—he wasn’t far out in his estimate of the abominations. He warmed to his dismal theme.

“Even if they’re driven back underground for the moment, how are you going to keep them there. Nice job it’ll be to make every house antproof. And walking about in armoured clothes, or soaked with anticide, will be pleasant, won’t it?”

“But they die off or go to sleep in the winter, don’t they?” I suggested.

“How d’you know this kind will? Anyhow, they’ve got lots of time before them. How many of us will live ’til the first frost? How about harvesting, and tending sheep and cattle? We’ll all starve if we’re not killed. It’s a conquest, an arranged business, I tell you. Perhaps some of us will be kept as slaves. There are species who have others to wait on them—”

“Will you shut up?” roared Mayence. “We’re in the devil’s own pickle, without being driven daft by your maunderings! What d’you reckon we’d better do, Tom? Stay here ’til the siege is raised?”

“How about the river?” I asked hopefully. “The oil keeps the beasts off. If we soaked ourselves, we might get there all right and find a boat.”

“Probably a few thousand others have found it already,” he chuckled grimly; “and a few billions of our little friends appear to have gone in the same direction. It’s risky every way.”

We all stared gloomily at that ceaseless torrent of venomous life, pouring, pouring silently, swiftly, with an ordered purpose. Against uncountable myriads so devilishly endowed, what had man to oppose? I could think of no adequate defence.

“Perhaps you’re right, Vidal,” I said. “One hopes of course. But—”

“Have you got anything to eat or drink?” Mayence interrupted. “We must keep our pecker up.”

“Biscuits, whisky, soda—that’s all,” said I, producing them. And we ate and drank unpleasantly, each mouthful being tainted with the all-pervading petroleum, then stared out of the window again.

“The noise is dying down, I think,” said Vidal at length. “But what’s that racket overhead?”

Mayence listened.

“Somebody breaking the law. An aeroplane coming—over there, see? By jove! It’s the old training ’bus, the biplane at Hendon. What the dickens are they after?”

Moving quite slowly, the ’plane hove in sight, skimming dangerously near the housetops, one of the two men in her apparently searching the ground with field-glasses. Mayence snatched up the linen overall I wore when working, tied a sleeve to a walking stick, and thrust it outside, waving ’til the airman saw it, and, putting a big megaphone to his head, shouted something which was drowned by the rattle of the engine. Slowly the machine swung about over the pit, a small, dark object fell from it, and—“crash!” a mighty spout of dust flew up, concrete foundation walls and scaffold-poles crumbled and rocked, tinkling glass fell in showers. The man in the plane had dropped a bomb into the ants’ portal.

With the explosion their columns broke, thinned, and vanished into doorways, the drains and crevices; in twenty seconds they were all under cover. The ’plane circled out of sight, returned, and this time we caught something of what the megaphone bawled to us: “…in a dozen places…going to shut ’em down…all right soon.” We waved an answer, they shot away, and in a few minutes we heard the smack of another bomb, followed at intervals by others, each more distant.

“A dozen places!” exclaimed Vidal. “What did I say? It’s an organised invasion. A fat lot of good those chaps have done. See!”

The side of the crater made by the explosion began to heave and crumble, a dark spot appeared and grew larger, and long before the sound of the last detonation came to us the ant river was flowing again, steadily as though it had never been so rudely interrupted.

Mayence mumbled disgustedly, and faced about. “Question is, what are we going to do? Stay and starve, or take the risk of going out?”

“They won’t touch us,” said I confidently.

“Don’t be too sure. Some of them, maybe, will sacrifice themselves on the off-chance of getting a bite home. At all events, I’ll go out first and reconnoitre.” But at this Vidal and I protested, and in the end we drew lots. The short match fell to me, and I confess to feeling horribly uncomfortable, but I managed to conceal my feelings whilst I was smeared anew with the abominably smelling oil; my boots were soaked ’til they squelched at every step; face, hair, cap, and gloves, all were saturated, and Mayence finished me off by tying a dripping duster around my neck. “In case they drop on you from aloft,” he explained. “Now you’re all right. We’ll get ready while you’re gone.”

I opened the door gingerly. At the edge of the landing was a group of ants, several score, big fellows, with their heads turned towards me; simultaneously, they darted forward, came almost to my feet—and retreated. Instinctively I squashed the hindmost. “All serene!” I cried. “They won’t face it,” and slithered down the first flight to find another and larger vidette, which behaved exactly like the others. I had no more fear after that, but went on confidently as a medieval knight in armour of proof hewing his way through a mob of
peasants.

On the first floor I peeped into the office of Wardell, an advertising agent, and saw what was left of him lying back in his chair, a half-open sample tin of insect killer on the floor beside him; evidently he had bethought him of this defence at the last moment. The ants were swarming all over him, and I turned away hastily, feeling very sick; it is a shocking thing to see a man you have known and swapped drinks with in process of disintegration. Yet the sight served to diminish the shock I received when I found the entry and the lower stairs completely choked with bodies. I went back and reported, and, since there was no other way, we at last let ourselves down by a rope from the window of Wardell’s room, after lowering the precious oil-drum, now half empty, and set foot in a Fleet Street transmogrified to the semblance of a battlefield.

Perhaps a soldier hardened to slaughter could have supported the spectacle, but to us it was near overwhelming. Remember that the view from my office was circumscribed by projecting buildings on either side, and that the portion of street it commanded was abandoned at the first outrush, so that what we had seen before was as nothing compared with what confronted us.

Looking westward, the street was filled from side to side with a horrible barricade, vehicles of all sorts piled and wedged together in inextricable confusion, for a base; and over, under, between, shaken together and trembling to the throb of the engines still working beneath, were piled the dead.

From the accounts since collected it would seem that on this fatal day the ants emerged from the earth, not in a dozen, but in scores of places, from each of which they diverged on either hand, killing as they went, ’til they met the columns of their fellows, and so ringed Central London in a cordon of poison, whilst from other points within the circle other hordes spread devastatingly ’til hardly a nook or corner remained unvisited.

Of the millions of folks so surrounded, comparatively few escaped, and those, curiously enough, mainly by the underground railways, which were let alone for some time; but the majority of the people fled panic-stricken from one army only to encounter another, and most often met their fate struggling amidst maddened crowds.

Horror left us dumb for a little, then Mayence, hugging his oil-drum, turned towards Ludgate Circus, and we followed in silence. With us, on either hand, marched thousands of ants at a respectful distance, and so we came to Bridge Street, and the first survivor, a telephone linesman, slung in a travelling cradle from the cables crossing the road. Intent upon our steps, we were startled by his hoarse cry from aloft: “Hi mates!” he called.

“Can you let yourself down?” answered Mayence. “We’ve got stuff to keep them off. Come along.”

The man became frantically busy with a coil of wire.

“Righto!” he yelled. “Just a minute.”

There was a sudden commotion amongst our escort, a thin brown thread shot up the façade of the building directly below the poles supporting the telephone wires.

“They know!” exclaimed Vidal. “They’re after him. Quick, man, or they’ll get you yet.”

Mayence stood ready with his oil, the linesman dropped the end of his cable almost to out feet, unbuckled the strap which held him in the cradle, wound his cap about the wire, gave one unearthly scream, and fell smashing to the pavement. I think he was dead before he reached the ground.

We trudged on towards the river without a word; pity, horror, terror, all capacity for emotion seemed numbed to exhaustion, and we moved mechanically. Blackfriars Bridge was choked by another dreadful barricade, the approaches to the stations were impassable. The river was dotted with people swimming or clinging to lifebuoys or fragments of wood, the barges anchored on the further side were hidden by men clustering like swarming bees, the outermost continually dragged down by others who struggled up from the water; the “President,” the old Naval Volunteer training ship, lay low in the water, weighed down by the numbers aboard her, and dozens clung to her cables fore and aft. I saw one man maintaining possession of a packing-case, which barely supported him, with bloody knife; a dinghy drifted by, laden with women and one man, who threatened any who approached it with a revolver. As they neared the bridge the arch under which they must pass grew black, and though we shouted, the warning was unheard, or unheeded, the insect death rained down, the boat capsized, and we saw no more.

Nearly half an hour we stood there, hypnotised, the petroleum escaping from our saturated clothes and gathering in little pools around our feet, whilst the ants clustered thick in a semicircle behind and darted continually to and fro along the parapet in front, angry perhaps because we had so long escaped them. Then a river steamer without a living soul aboard, though her deck was piled, came in sight, her paddles revolving slowly, swinging uncertainly from side to side of the river, ’til she brought up with a crash on the piles of a wharf and began to settle down.

With the noise we awoke to a realisation of a new peril; London town was on fire. Heavy smoke clouds were drawing across the sun, rolling south-eastward before a rising breeze.

“Nobody to stop it,” said I. “But at least some of those infernal things’ll get roasted.”

“They’ll go underground ’til it’s over,” Vidal said.

“We’ll go up with the first spark,” said Mayence. “Can you swim?”

He shook his head.

“Not a stroke.”

“And Tom is equal to about a hundred yards. We’ll have to make a float of some kind and keep under water going through the bridges; we’ll get below these for a start, anyhow. Come on.”

With our abominable guard still in attendance we turned our backs on the river, and by great good fortune found the roadway underneath the railway viaduct passable, though we had to climb over many vehicles. The smoke grew even thicker, and we could scarce see our way, but it appeared noxious to the ants, who thinned away and had quite disappeared ere luck brought us to the end of a short street and a little wharf.

“Here we are,” said Mayence. “And there are planks and rope. We’ll make a raft of sorts. Hurry!”

Somehow, in no very workmanlike fashion to be sure, since we groped in pungent semi-darkness, we got our raft together and launched. It was high time; we were half suffocated, and the flames, spreading unchecked with frightful rapidity, roared near at hand as, sitting awash, we started on our voyage, Mayence, sitting aft, paddling with a short board ’til the mid stream caught us, and we were swept swiftly forward, unable to see more than a yard or two ahead.

Soon a dark mass loomed above us, the raft swerved, we shot through a bridge—Southwark—and never an ant materialised. Either we passed unseen or they had gone before the smother.

“Three more to pass, and we’re all right,” grunted Mayence.

“Look out! Shove off!” A barge drifting beam-on lay in our path. Vidal howled, thrust out a leg pushing with all his might. We bumped once, and went clear without receiving boarders. I needn’t describe what we glimpsed in passing, nor what we presently saw as we circled in the swirl of the Cannon Street railway bridge; suffice it to say that many had sought refuge upon its floating fenders—in vain.

Below was a red flare of flaming warehouses belching showers of sparks, yet none reached us, and we whirled blindly on in the black, smothering smoke blanket, passed beneath London Bridge without seeing it, and narrowly missed running full tilt into an anchored boat, perilously laden with folks, who yelled in chorus as we rasped across their cable; two men with oars out tugged dementedly, another fool struck wildly with a boathook, smote his iron deep into one of our planks and nearly capsized the lot.

“Let go, you idiot!” roared Mayence, whilst the water licked their gunwale, and, fortunately for them, he obeyed, and we parted company, losing sight of them instantly.

Vidal levered the hook clear and crouched ready to fend off from what might come next. With ebb and current together the stream was a race, and we should have fared badly had we encountered anything moored; but our amazing good fortune held, and though we caught sight of many craft, and heard voices all about us, we kept clear of everything ’til, about the neighbourhood of Deptford, the smoke thinned and we could see our fellow-men once more.

Either margin of the river was lined with people standing in the water, knee-deep, waist-deep, up to the neck; beyond these a floating fringe, then boats and rafts, all loaded nearly to sinking; and the voice of their misery was a continuous giant groan, a deep, plaintive note of despair, such as I hope never to hear again. Of the people in boats around, none heeded us, except to curse when we fouled them; but after I had picked up the blade of a broken oar, we kept a better course, and had no more collisions.

“We must get as far down as we can before the tide turns,” Mayence explained; and we paddled our best ’til in the broad reach a little below Greenwich, we met a flotilla of torpedo boats. Half dead with fatigue, blistered all over by the oil which had saved our lives at the expense of our skins, we were hauled aboard the first, and stowed in the narrow quarters below, already crowded with refugees, whilst the boats steamed into the smoky pall to rescue all they might, and when they were loaded, dropped down river and decanted us into the cruisers, battleships, and liners anchored about Tilbury.