Vengeance Child (23 page)

‘Wait a minute, June was only forty-two. We're not talking about geriatrics croaking here, are we?'

‘That we are not, Mr Mayor. Every single person on this island is at risk. We must assume, also, that everyone who suffered the first stage of the disease will enter second stage within hours. That's everyone, whether they be elderly or young.'

Victor had been to White Cross Farm to check on his sister and brother-in-law. Mary was her old self. However, Graham had tried to do too much farm work after leaving his sickbed. Now he was so weary that all he could manage was to mutter a word or two here and there.

Shaking her head, Mary had complained, ‘Can you believe he'd forgotten that we're supposed to be celebrating our wedding anniversary on Sunday? Now he's taken himself back to bed, just as the animals need feeding.'

As Victor took the shoreline path back to the village he felt much better. The queasiness had vanished. Before leaving, he'd been able to help his sister out by feeding the goats and pigs. On the beach the Saban Deer were grazing on kelp now it was low tide. Few land animals could stomach the salty estuary weed but then the Saban weren't your regular animal. Few creatures in the animal kingdom have blue eyes. Some humans do. Siamese cats certainly, but the Saban have eyes that are electric blue. Despite the gloom, due to thick cloud, he caught flashes of sapphire as they lifted their heads to watch him pass, still munching on leathery kelp fronds as they did so. In his role as island ranger, Victor habitually scanned the terrain for anything amiss. As he passed the Saban he noticed specks of silver at the water's edge. Anything that didn't resemble the natural shore required further investigation.

This stretch of beach consisted of brownish pebbles, so those silver glints looked anything but natural. Quickly, he jogged to the water's edge. Lucky I checked, he mused as he bent down to carefully remove what had threatened the safety of the animals, and humans, too, if they chose to paddle here barefoot. For there, tangled in a spray of twigs, was a yellow fisherman's line adorned with a dozen steel hooks. Victor handled the line carefully; the points of the hooks had been filed for extra sharpness, while the barbs would grip their prey with a bloody-minded tenacity. Once that hook slipped into your flesh it wouldn't be coming out in a hurry.

Clearly, the hooks were intended for big sea fish. What's more he counted ten hooks on the tangle of line. Probably a commercial fisherman had left the baited hooks attached to a buoy way out to sea. They'd broken free, then an incoming tide had swept them up the estuary. Victor checked further along the shoreline. Sure enough he found a line with eight more viciously sharp hooks. The havoc these would cause to the soft muzzle of a deer didn't bear thinking about. Victor picked up the line. Dear God, he'd be entering a whole world of pain if he accidentally impaled himself on one of those. He saw the ends of the tough nylon line had been cut. Probably by the propeller blades of a speedboat that had got too close to the fishermen's buoys.

Victor carried the tangled lines, with their barbed weaponry, to one of the bins near the path. Gusts of wind shook the trees by the time he started out again for the village. A pall of cloud obscured the hills. The River Severn rose into angry peaks, as if the water tried hard to form sharply pointed pyramids. At the tip of the island the castle had begun to vanish into a grey murk of water vapour carried by the westerly. As Victor neared the village the path narrowed. Here the beach was narrower, too. The path was raised a couple of feet above the shore on wooden piles. To the landward side a steep-sided mound flanked the path. This constricted section of pathway ran for around two hundred yards until the ground opened out just before the village.

Through the mist he glimpsed a figure almost a hundred yards away. He recognized it as Laura Parris. She headed toward the village, her back to him. He remembered only too clearly the painful conversation with Lou. He hurried after Laura determined to clear the air with her. Damn it, he was so annoyed with himself. Laura was beautiful. They'd got on so well together – both shared the same sense of humour. Then he'd retreated into his shell. You've effectively blown it with her, Brodman, he scolded.

‘Laura,' he shouted. If anything, Laura quickened her pace. Had she heard, and decided to hurry away so he couldn't speak to her? ‘Laura.' The figure dwindled as it moved along the narrow path between the shore and the bank that rose a good twenty feet to one side. ‘Laura!'

At that moment the ground quivered. Victor paused. He frowned. It did it again. The earth shuddered. A deep rumble throbbed through the air. Victor found himself remembering Solomon's words about what to do in an earthquake. An earthquake? Here? That's impossible. He'd barely registered the thought when a huge cry wailed through the sky. Victor spun round to see a vast object racing by the island. This dark mass of steel had no right to be here, or to be so close, or to be travelling so fast. ‘The idiots! The stupid idiots!' Victor took a moment to absorb the shocking sight. A huge tanker pounded along the river. Dangerously close to the island, too. The ship must have been seven hundred feet long – and with a displacement of thousands of tons it hurled a bow wave more than ten feet high at Siluria. Victor watched as the foaming wave roared up the beach. The Saban Deer fled before it. Fortunately they were fast, managing to escape the killer wave.

Victor glanced back at Laura. She wouldn't be so lucky. For some reason she hadn't heard the rumble of the ship's engines, or the cry of its foghorn. And because she walked with her back to it she hadn't seen the hulking vessel.

‘Laura! Watch out!'

She didn't react. Then again, the roar of the winds must have overwhelmed Victor's cry. His first instinct was to clamber up the banking. He'd make it just in time but that wouldn't grant him the precious moments to reach Laura before the bow wave struck. Already this man-made tsunami had hit the path a hundred yards behind him. Now it raced along this strip of land faster than a man could run. At six feet high that massive body of speeding water would shatter your bones before it swept you into the river. Then a combination of natural current and turbulence created by the ship would ensure that you drowned very quickly indeed. Victor dashed along the compacted shale. At one side of him rose the twenty-foot-high bank. At the other was the narrow ribbon of beach. Then closing in behind him at a furious rate was the tidal wave. The dirty-cream coloured wall of water ripped up the path like a plough blade. The concrete bin containing the fish hooks shattered as easily as a wine glass.

‘
Laura!
' Still she didn't hear. Behind him the liquid wall shattered timbers that held the path in place. He knew the wave gained on him. The only thing in his favour was that he'd got a head start. If he could reach Laura, he might be able to save her. Because if that thing hit it would kill her as surely as a bomb. Instead of shouting her name he sank all his energy into running. Vibration shook the ground. To his left the huge black flank of the ship slid past. Water foamed at the bow as the captain broke every safety rule in the book. Victor risked a glance back. The tidal wave was now perhaps fifty yards behind him. When it struck a bush it wrenched it from the ground. Debris in the menacing curl of water would act like a meat grinder if it hit a human being. Ahead of him, Laura walked; she'd got something on her mind that distracted her from the outside world. Once that tsunami struck she'd be gone. Victor, too. He glanced at the river.
Ghorlan's waiting. A cold embrace. Liquid eternity . . .
He drove the thought from his mind. Ahead of Laura a line of bushes concealed steps up the banking. Being a stranger to the island, it was unlikely she knew they were there. If he made it in time, that would be their escape route.

Seconds later he caught up with her. No time for explanations. Nothing but this. He grabbed her. Without slowing he ran with her in his arms.

‘Victor? What the hell are you doing? Put me down! Put me down, you . . .'

Then her eyes went wide. She'd seen the ship. The tidal wave, too. Its sheer violence vibrated the earth under them. It thundered. A ripping sound reached their ears as it stripped turf from the banking.

Victor reached the steps. By now, the tidal wave displaced the very air. A hurricane struck them that stank of river mud. The ship's horn cried out again – a lament for dead souls. Bounding up the steps with Laura in his arms, Victor tried to outrun the lethal barrage of water. Bushes writhed to his right as the wave struck.

As he passed the ten-foot mark, halfway up the banking, the crest of the wave smacked against his heel. Then it gouged out a muddy chunk of mound. Half-stumbling, Victor regained his balance, then carried Laura to level ground where they collapsed on to soft grass. Still, with their arms round each other they sat, trembling, as the man-made tsunami roared along the path, channelled by the earth incline. The wave only died when the ground opened out into fields. Even then a wash of brown water, at ankle-depth, swirled its way through stems of wheat.

Twenty-Eight

The cry had woken Archer. Frightened, he'd looked out of the window. A huge ship glided past the island. As big as an office block it dwarfed the houses. The wash from its bows ran up the beach in a big wave to smack against the jetty. In fact, it was so powerful it snatched away a dinghy, which vanished into the foam never to reappear. Archer realized that if it wasn't for the village being built on higher ground the water would have gushed into the houses.

‘Jay said Laura's name.' He shuddered. ‘He's done that thing to her.'

Sleep had dispelled the effects of the seizure. Even so, he felt unsteady on his feet as he went to pull on his shoes. At least he'd been put to bed in his clothes so he wouldn't waste time getting dressed. What matters now, he thought, what is ultra-important is to tell Laura . . . ‘You've gotta know that Jay's put the curse on you.'

Outside, the cold air stank of river mud. A mist made the houses all faint . . . all colours were washed out. All faded, weaker, sickly . . . It was like the village was slowly dying. Normally there wouldn't be wind when it was foggy. Yet a hard breeze pushed the trees. Branches shook as if they protested at the rough treatment. Leaves, stripped from the twigs, raced along the ground in a river of green. And the gales made crying sounds across the roofs. It made Archer think of sorrow and weeping. There weren't many people about as Archer headed toward the hostel. A cottage door had been left open. It banged furiously in the storm. All of a sudden a figure emerged from the murk. It was the island's doctor; he spoke into a mobile with such grave tones they filled Archer with dread.

‘Listen . . . I am begging you to send help. Just this morning I've had to issue nine death certificates. I'm on my way now to another patient who is in a coma. At this rate half the island will be unconscious by nightfall. This isn't an epidemic, madam, it is a plague.'

The doctor never even noticed Archer as he swept past. At that moment to Archer the man didn't seem like a human being. He was a fabrication of dark shadows. A seething mass of worries, fears, of problems without solutions, an individual whose role it was to see death in men's faces, to be in the company of the dying, then to certify their death. Archer couldn't render that intuitive understanding in words. Instead, his imagination turned that figure into the essence of dread.

These dark emotions made Archer move all the quicker. He had to warn Laura. Jay had repeated her name. The curse was on her. How long before the doctor, with all those grim shadows, came to sit beside her bed?

The boy, however, came to a dead stop. For there, in the middle of the street, as if waiting for him, was another figure.

‘Jay. Get away from me.'

Jay merely stood there. Still as a statue. Green leaves raced by his feet. Fog swirled round him. Slowly, Archer moved forward. He longed to flee from Jay, but he had to pass him to reach the hostel. He needed to find Laura. She must be warned. Meanwhile, the breeze ruffled Jay's hair. The eyes were bright. As if he was excited about something. Those eyes tracked Archer as he tried to sidle by.

Then Jay's lips moved. Just a little. Barely a twitch.

‘Don't you dare say Laura's name again.' Archer clenched his fists. ‘You shouldn't have done that. It's rotten. Laura loves us. She's nice. You've put a bad thing on her. She'll die now. And it's all your fault!'

Jay's lips parted.

Archer now stood just five paces from Jay. ‘D'you hear me? Don't you dare say Laura's name.'

Jay didn't blink. His stare blazed through Archer. For a moment Archer glimpsed hundreds of screaming men, women and children in that stare. A sickening deluge of sound. A ship was sinking into an ocean. He sensed the panic before it became a surge of rage. A fury. A distillation of pure anger. That emotion ripped through the eight-year-old. His nerve endings burned with it. He swayed. Suddenly it seemed like there was no earth beneath his feet. It was as if he was slipping downward.
To join Dad in his grave, to smell wet earth, taste the rot, feel the worm . . .
Then his senses snapped back to absolute clarity as he heard Jay begin to speak: ‘Archer . . . Archer . . .'

With a howl of despair Archer ran past Jay toward the hostel. Yet even when he put his hands over his ears he could still hear the boy's soft, insistent voice.

‘Archer . . . Archer . . . Archer . . .'

Twenty-Nine

Victor and Laura followed the wake of destruction. Because the path had been ripped out of the shoreline by the tidal wave they stuck to the top of the banking.

‘Damn ship,' Victor growled. ‘It was too close to the island. It's a miracle that the captain didn't run her aground.'