Slime (24 page)

The major remained adamant. Until they were actually in the hospital he refused to commit himself one way or the other. Had the helicopter been able to land, that might have been a different matter; as things were, like it or not, Tim had to stay on board.

In disgust, Tim pushed the face-mask back into his pocket and sat slumped in his seat, broodily watching the men preparing to jump.

They flew in from the same direction and again hovered for a few seconds just beyond the clump of trees before beginning their descent. Despite the obvious power of those engines and the great turning blades, Tim was only too conscious that the slightest shift in the wind could send them all plunging to their deaths in that sea of jellyfish below.

The soldiers opened the door on the leeward side and two men took up positions there, spraying the ground
below with sub-machine guns. Next, they hauled a heavy, close-meshed net over to the entrance and dropped it out in such a way that it spread like a dark cloud as it fell. Its purpose, he knew from what the major had said earlier, was to contain the jellyfish in the immediate area where the men would land, at least until they were properly on their feet. How effective it would be, no one could tell.

‘Go!’ the sergeant yelled, his voice muffled behind his respirator.

The major went first, followed by the others in rapid succession, each man swarming down a rope which reached to within a couple of feet of the ground. Once down there, they spread out ready for their sweep through the jellyfish to get to the hospital. Some now carried rifles, he saw, though two had flame throwers and some were still armed with garden hoes.

Tim pulled on his gloves. No way was he going to be left behind, he decided.

The last man went over the edge. With a wave to the pilot, the sergeant followed him.

‘Hang on! I’m going too!’ Tim bawled above the intolerable roar of the engines.

He paused only long enough to see the two startled faces peering back at him from the flight deck. In a couple of strides he’d reached the door. H swung his legs over the side, grasped the rope and a second later he was swinging freely in the wind, his arms feeling as though they were being dragged out of their sockets.

Hand over hand he went down, trying to grip the rope between his feet to steady himself but not always succeeding. The ground seemed one hell of a long way down – and
down
he had to go, for there was no chance he’d be able to climb back up into that cabin again, even if he’d wanted to. But then would he make it at all before the pilot found himself forced to regain height? Or before the
helicopter crashed, with him directly beneath it?

Despite his gloves he felt his hands slipping on the rope, unable to hold on any longer. He glanced down – and there was the ground, no more than five or six feet below him. He could see the jellyfish wriggling beneath the net.

Tim landed on his hands and knees; unable to steady himself he rolled over, skidding across the slime. Miraculously, he managed to get to his feet, shaken but otherwise unhurt. Only his face was unprotected; without the net to restrain them, one of those tentacles might well have found him.

He looked around. A couple of soldiers glanced back and gesticulated towards him, but then went on, moving cautiously towards the hospital. They clearly had no intention of waiting for him. He was on his own, and with no means of defending himself. His hoe was still in the helicopter which was now soaring far above the trees.

Every step had to be taken slowly and carefully. Through the thick rubber of his waders he could feel jellyfish exploring his ankles. He needed a stick, a spade, anything…

Just beyond the trees, he remembered, was a small building standing on its own. He headed for it, hoping to find something suitable there before attempting the longer walk to the main hospital. The moment it came into sight, he spotted someone signalling urgently from one of the windows.

‘Sue!’

It was unmistakably Sue and she was waving a lighted torch, hoping to attract the soldiers’ attention. They couldn’t see her, that was obvious, from the direction they were facing; nor, inside those anti-gas suits, were they able to hear her calls.

‘Sue!’ he shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Sue! Hold on! I’m coming!’

Trying to hurry, he almost fell face down in the midst
of a cluster of five jellyfish which had gathered hungrily in his path. He had to force himself to slow down again. Before each step he had to be quite certain the ground was firm under his foot.

‘Tim, don’t go round the front!’ she screamed. ‘Tim, they’re everywhere! In the corridor, coming up the stairs – oh, God! Oh, I’m glad you’re here!’

Beneath the window was a small lean-to shed; against the wall next to it were half a dozen plastic milk crates and – to his relief – a stoking shovel.

‘OK, I’m coming up through the window!’ he called back to her. ‘Sue – I love you! It’s going to be all right!’

A look of astonishment replaced the hysteria on her face. Then she laughed. ‘Oh, you are an idiot, Tim! What a time to say it! But I do love you too!’

Jellyfish were crowding around his feet, almost willing him to make a false move. He spotted one on the lean-to roof as well, but pushed it off the far side with his shovel. Clearing a space among those on the ground – slicing a couple in half for good measure – he arranged the milk crates against the side of the shed and climbed up.

The shed roof sagged alarmingly beneath his weight but somehow he managed to scramble over it. Sue grasped his arms to help him through the window.

‘Oh, Sue, thank God I found you!’

He took her in his arms, holding her close. His heart went out to her as he took in the smashed door held shut by a cupboard pushed up against it, the long knife strapped to the broom handle, its blade glowing green with jellyfish slime, and the sick child wrapped in a blanket on the desk. She must have been through hell, he thought, and it wasn’t over yet.

‘Tim – the window!’

She broke away from him and reached for the knife. Across the sill over which he had just come lay one of the most beautiful jellyfish he had yet seen. Its delicately-patterned
red-and-pink body pulsated gently as though it were preening itself.

‘Where did that come from?’

Sue was too busy to answer. She held her broom handle like a halberd and skilfully sliced the jellyfish in half, prodding at the wriggling remains in order to push them outside.

‘I hate them!’ she exclaimed passionately. ‘Why have they come here? What have we done wrong?’

A second jellyfish dropped down on to the window-sill, and then a third.

‘They’re coming from the roof!’ Tim cried. ‘Bloody hell, how many more?’

He struggled to pull the window down while Sue did her best to keep them at bay with the knife, cutting into them, chopping off those waving tentacles and trying to shove them outside again, although several pieces fell into the room. At last he managed to get the window down until it jammed, leaving a gap of about four inches at the bottom.

It was then, looking around for something he could use as a weapon, that he noticed another jellyfish squeezing itself in through a crack at the foot of the door. Through the gaping hole left by the broken glass dozens of jellyfish were to be seen piling up outside the door, one on top of the next, the whole mountain of them quivering as if in anticipation of the food on the inside.

For a moment it seemed to Tim that a signal must have been transmitted ordering all jellyfish in the area to co-ordinate an attack on the laboratory. Then suddenly he realised the terrible truth. The signal was his own fear. These jellyfish were predators hunting for food, with Sue, the sick child and Tim himself as prey.

In some subtle way, their desperation marked them out. It was a phenomenon not unknown in nature. Not recognising what they were doing, the victims were selecting
themselves.

‘Tim! For Chrissake, come and help me! They’re getting in!’

Remembering something Jocelyn had said, Tim searched quickly among the jars on the laboratory bench for some acid.

‘We’ll try this!’

He pulled out the glass stopper and splashed a few drops over the jellyfish on the window ledge. Immediately they began to curl up, silently writhing. He turned, to scatter more on the one which had squeezed in at the foot of the door. It had the same effect: oh, if only they’d scream, he thought, nauseated.

An acrid smell wafted through the laboratory, catching in their throats and causing their eyes to smart. The sick child on the desk coughed pathetically, but there was nothing they could do for her. In that same moment, the cupboard against the door suddenly shifted under the sheer weight of the jellyfish heaped up outside and more of them tumbled in.

‘Tim – your glove!’ Sue shrieked as he splashed the acid too carelessly. ‘Quick, put it under the tap!’

Briefly, he held his hand under the stream of water. When he looked around, he saw she’d abandoned her makeshift spear and was busy emptying the contents of every jar she could find over the pile-up of jellyfish outside.

He seized the spear and began systematically to deal with those which had succeeded in getting into the room.

‘No, that won’t work!’ she shouted, stretching her arm through the hole in the door to pour yet more chemicals on to them. ‘There are too many!’

‘You might at least read the labels!’ he protested.

‘Why? I wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Let’s just pour the lot on them. Kill as many as we can before they kill us.’

Coughing and spluttering from the stench, they threw out everything they could find, clearing the benches, the shelves, even emptying out the fridge. It began to work, at least for the time being. Beyond the door, on the steps and in the short corridor, the rippling bodies became still again, with only here and there a weak sign of pulsation.

On the window-sill the remaining jellyfish bodies were quite inert. Tim jabbed at them with the knife-point but there was no reaction.

‘It’s not natural,’ Sue whispered, clutching his arm. ‘Tim, I’m scared.’

‘I think we’ve killed them.’

She shook her head. ‘Even if we have, there’ll be others. What do we do then?’

‘Drink… drink…’ the little girl on the desk called out suddenly, delirious. ‘Mummy said I must have something to drink. Always ask if you’re thirsty. Ask nicely.’

‘It’s all right, Sarita.’ Sue hurried over to her. ‘It’s over now.’

Several baby medusae lay in the sink like tiny rust-spots, and Tim found more on his glove. But they managed to filter some water into a beaker which they set over a burner to boil.

Tim raised the window again to make another attempt at closing it properly. The wooden frame was warped and it jammed every few inches. Outside, the ground was still under water. Hundreds of jellyfish were out there, hardly moving for the most part, though occasionally one would lazily change its position. It looked as though the whole earth was covered with some strange, pink fungus over which the mysterious green luminescence hung like marsh gas.

With their next attack they’ll succeed, he thought resignedly. There wasn’t all that much left to throw at them.

‘Anyone there!’ a cheerful voice called from inside the
building. ‘Tim? Sue?’

‘Major Burton!’ Tim exclaimed. He strode over to the door. ‘Hello! Up here!’ he shouted through the hole. ‘Watch out for jellies, though!’

‘They’ve come for us?’ Sue looked incredulous, then threw herself on his neck. ‘Oh, Tim, we’re going to live! Oh, my darling, I was so convinced we – ’

For the first time, she broke down and cried. Then the water in the beaker began to boil and, sniffing, she took it off the flame.

Major Burton was still dressed in his anti-gas suit, though he had taken off the respirator. Tim had never imagined he’d be so glad to see those pale blue eyes again, regarding him with that same cool reserve. Two of the men with him pushed the jellyfish aside with their hoes to clear a path to the door.

‘These jellies are dead,’ he said. ‘How did you manage that?’

While Sue attended to the sick girl, dipping a corner of her handkerchief into the boiled water for her to suck, Tim explained what had happened.

‘You threw everything at them?’ The major sounded disapproving. ‘Regardless of what it was?’

‘In the end, yes. Everything we could lay our hands on. All except what’s left here, and that’s not much.’

‘Even this?’ The major stooped to pick up a light metal tube.

‘Several of those.’ For the first time, Tim noticed it bore the label Sabin. It held no meaning for him. ‘Is that what did it?’

‘I’ve no more idea what killed them than you have. One thing I do know is that after this we’re all going to be spending some time in quarantine.’ He went back to the door and leaned out. ‘You men! I want you to find several airtight containers. We’ll have to take a few of these jellies back with us. Jump to it, now!’

21

Sue spotted the house first. It was a pale, oldish semi built in yellow brick; a neat little garden in front, and a wooden container for milk bottles beside the spotless doorstep. Number twenty-one.

‘There’s no need for you to come in, love,’ Tim offered once again, feeling awkward about the whole thing. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

‘You don’t expect me to sit and wait in the car?’ she retorted. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily. Besides, a wife’s good for your image.’

The bell-push triggered off two-note chimes inside. Everything was so tidy, Tim thought as he looked around. The carefully-arranged front-room curtains looked as though each fold had been measured exactly; as for the potted plants on the window ledge, every leaf and petal curled at its appointed angle. It was certainly not what he’d expected.

In fact, he’d hardly known what to expect when the message came, out of the blue, that the thug would like to see him. No particular time or date mentioned, just that he’d something he’d like to say, so could Tim drop in when convenient? Reading it, Tim had shrugged and was about to throw the paper away when Sue rescued it. He ought to go, she said; the man obviously had something on his mind.

The woman who opened the door recognised Tim immediately. ‘Oh, Arthur will be so pleased!’ she exclaimed, her face lighting up. ‘Do come in. It means so much to him.’

She was small, almost mousy in appearance; hardly the
sort of person Tim had imagined. Greying blonde hair kept meticulously in place, a blue hand-knitted jumper and plain skirt: she was as neat as the house she ruled over.

He introduced Sue, then asked how Arthur was keeping. Since that episode in the harbour he’d not set eyes on the man, though it was common knowledge among the Gulliver crew that he’d be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

‘It was the stroke, you know,’ she explained, shaking her head. ‘Them jellyfish was bad enough, but it was the stroke did for him. Still, he keeps cheerful. Must warn you, though, he can’t speak too well.’

Arthur was in the back room, sitting by the window. His face was terribly thin and pitted with scars. He was slumped in his wheelchair, his shoulders sagging forward, his muscles wasted away: a mere ghost of the man he used to be. On seeing Tim, his lips distorted into a shadow of a smile; his hand shook as he held it out.

‘Gla’ yer come, Tim.’

Tim, deeply shocked, stammered some kind of reply.

‘Tim sa’ my li’. Wan say than’yer.’

‘That’s right.’ His wife nodded encouragingly, arranging a pillow at his back to help him to sit upright. ‘He says you saved his life and he wants to thank you for it.’

‘Goo’ fi’. Kee’ guar’ up.’

‘He says you’re a good fighter but you must keep your guard up.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘He’s always on about boxing. Watches every minute of it on television. I think I’d better make some tea, don’t you? I’m sure you’ve a lot to talk about.’

‘I’ll come and help you,’ said Sue.

Left alone with him, Tim began to say awkwardly how all the Gulliver team sent their regards. Arthur nodded eagerly, then interrupted.

‘’Irl ’rector. Ver’ ’lever. ’Irl ’rector.’

‘Oh – the girl director? Yes, she’s a clever director all right. Jacqui, you mean? She was a bit nervous that first day – d’you remember? But she’s settled down now.’

To Tim’s surprise, they managed somehow to keep a conversation going. He retailed all the gossip about Gulliver – not that the thug knew half the people, but it seemed to interest him. Dorothea was leaving at the end of the month to marry an Australian millionaire; something of a Gulliver-type tycoon himself, from all she said. They were to honeymoon on their own private yacht in the Caribbean. Jacqui had bought herself a flat in Chelsea, telling everyone she intended to install a single bed and it was going to stay that way. The cameraman was running a book on it. As for the company, they were rubbing their hands all the way to the bank since one of the American networks had bought Gulliver for peak-hour showing.

It was Mrs Arthur – as Tim thought of her – who brought up the subject of jellyfish when she returned with a steaming pot of tea on a tray, together with her best china.

‘Of course, Arthur was still in hospital while it was all going on,’ she said, offering him a biscuit. ‘But they repeated your films the other week; he couldn’t tear himself away. That must’ve been a terrible experience.’

‘It was.’

A few moments’ silence, then Sue came to the rescue. How she could still talk about it, he didn’t understand. Maybe it was some sort of release for her. On himself it had the opposite effect; these days he clammed up.

Dead? He hadn’t believed it when the major had said it all those weeks ago back in the hospital laboratory, and he’d been right, too. Jocelyn had examined the specimens and pronounced them still alive. They were paralysed, she’d explained, their motor nerves put out of action by the Sabin vaccine, which was a live polio strain. In due course they would starve to death.

That helped, certainly. Acting speedily for once, the authorities organised an airlift of Sabin vaccine from all over the world. Some was used in a mass immunisation campaign, with people in every town and village in the country lining up to receive their lumps of sugar, each bearing a precious drop of the vaccine. The rest – well over half, he was told – was fed to the jellyfish invaders. It was germ warfare, though no one called it that.

For weeks afterwards their bodies were seen floating on the sea, washed about by the tides.

Tim had been kept in quarantine for ten days only, although the Ministry hadn’t allowed that to hold up his filming programme. One day shortly after his release he’d travelled down to the coast with Jocelyn to witness the ‘Sabin effect’ for himself. She had turned pale when she saw it; then, pressing her lips together, she had stared at him disturbingly with those troubled eyes of hers before announcing abruptly that she’d seen enough. When next he heard of her, she was in India on a walking tour with her husband Robin. No one knew when they were due back.

Dead?

He still found it hard to grasp. Still expected to see them lurking in some corner. Pulsating.

‘Well, it’s been really nice you could come,’ Mrs Arthur was saying, standing up. ‘And I’m sure Arthur enjoyed it.’

Sue, bless her, had found a diplomatic moment to draw their visit to an end. Tim took Arthur’s shaking hand and said how glad he was to see him fighting back; it seemed to please him.

They were at the garden gate and about to say goodbye when Mrs Arthur stopped them, her eyes filled with tears.

‘It was so good of you to come,’ she confided, her voice breaking. ‘In his young days Arthur could’ve had any girl he wanted. Maybe he did too, I don’t know. I never asked. He was winning fights then, you see. But it was me he married and he’s been a good husband. When I look at
him now – Oh, it’s such a pity!’

Driving away in the car afterwards both Tim and Sue remained sunk in their own thoughts. Since that terrible day at the hospital fighting off the jellyfish they had hardly spent a single night apart. Yet sooner or later – he was only too aware – she’d be cast in some play she wanted to do while he would be hundreds of miles away, filming for Gulliver. Would it all start again?

As she drew up outside their flat and switched off the engine, they turned to each other simultaneously.

‘If we could do Beatrice and Benedick together – ’

‘D’you think a small part for me in Gulliver might be –’

Laughing, they both stopped in mid-sentence.

‘We do need to work something out, don’t we?’ he said seriously. ‘Some shows together, anyhow.’

‘Shakespeare?’ she teased him. ‘You looked good in that hospital holding a spear.’

‘Why not? I always wanted to.’

Withdraw… withdraw… withdraw…

The signal became fainter until it gradually died away. The species had survived despite the overwhelming danger. They were depleted in numbers… much weakened… yet they still existed.

They rode the currents now westwards, feeding wherever food was to be found, sending out their planula larvae to seek some safe anchorage where they could grow until in the fullness of time they produced a new generation of disc medusae. Most larvae died, but the future lay with those that survived.

A few drifted blindly away from the main shoals, still westwards, reaching Miami Beach. Then once again the signal pulsed out.

Food… food… food…