X the unknown, p.22
X the Unknown, page 22
‘It’s been like it all night,’ the sergeant told him. ‘Even our patrol cars are having trouble keeping in contact because their radios have been affected.’
‘What do you think it is? An electrical storm?’
The sergeant could only shrug.
At the other end of the line McGill heard a voice he recognised despite the ever-present hiss and crackle of static. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s me again. I had to call it a day with the mobile, no signal. Now, as I was saying, I need one more night here if that’s possible.’
The person at the other end said something.
‘Why do I have to speak to him? Can’t you authorise it?’ McGill protested.
The voice apparently couldn’t.
‘All right, you’d better put me through, then,’ McGill said, watching as the desk sergeant answered a call of his own.
‘Duty sergeant speaking,’ the uniformed man said.
On the other end of his own line, McGill heard another voice he recognised and he stiffened at the sound. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Just one more night. If nothing happens I’ll catch the first train back to London in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ the duty sergeant said, continuing with his own conversation. ‘You’re going to have to speak up. The line’s terrible – it has been all night.’
McGill saw the expression on the man’s face darken.
‘What about the occupants of the car?’ the sergeant asked, scribbling something down on a piece of paper.
‘Yes, sir,’ McGill went on, intrigued now by the other call he could hear in the background. ‘First thing tomorrow morning. Thank you, sir.’ He hung up, replacing the receiver slowly, his attention now caught by the duty sergeant’s words.
‘That’s impossible,’ the uniformed man said. ‘Where are you calling from? And where’s the car?’
McGill hesitated a moment longer.
‘Melted?’ the desk sergeant snapped. ‘How could the body be melted?’
McGill shot the man a perplexed glance.
‘There’s a patrol car in that area,’ the desk sergeant went on. ‘They can be there in five minutes. You stay there until they arrive.’ He hung up.
‘What did you say?’ McGill asked.
‘There’s been an accident,’ the desk sergeant went on. ‘A burned-out car has been found about five miles from here on the road between Broughton and Monkston.’
‘You said something about the occupant being melted. What did you mean?’
‘The caller said the inside of the car looked as if somebody had turned a flame-thrower on it and that the driver must have been melted.’
‘Where is this? Where did it happen?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘It’s official,’ McGill insisted, flipping his ID wallet open again. ‘Give me that address.’
Fifty-Eight
HE COULD SMELL the stench of burned flesh as soon as he climbed out of the car.
Leo McGill closed the door and glanced down the road towards the burned-out hulk of the Renault. There was smoke still rising mournfully from it and, even from a hundred or so yards away, he could see that most of the paint had been burned from the chassis, exposing bare metal beneath. The windscreen and rear window were gone, as was the roof of the vehicle, missing as if they’d simply been vaporised. The hedge to the right-and left-hand side of the country road was also scorched in several places. In others it had been flattened.
There was a single police car parked near the remains of the Renault and, as he moved closer, McGill could see that there was a man seated inside the emergency vehicle who was busy on the radio and seemed not to have seen him. McGill approached the Renault and peered more closely at the wreck. He recoiled from the acrid stench of charred human flesh and he could see fragments of white matter stuck to the driver’s seat and also to the dashboard. He realised with revulsion that it was bone. Pieces of seared flesh were also in evidence inside the car and the lumps of yellowish material that he could see he surmised were pieces of human fat. Whoever had been inside the car had been subjected to a source of heat so ferocious that it had literally melted them as easily as a candle melts before a flame.
McGill dropped to his haunches and ran his finger through the white residue that covered the tarmac around the car and also the chassis itself. It looked uncomfortably familiar to him and he let out an almost painful breath as he straightened up.
‘Hey, you.’
The shout came from behind him, from one of the large open fields that stretched away into the darkness on either side of the road.
McGill turned to see another uniformed policeman advancing towards him from the field.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Constable Chapman wanted to know, running an appraising gaze over McGill. ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’
McGill fumbled for his ID and showed it to Chapman who glanced at it and nodded.
‘When did this happen?’ McGill asked, nodding towards the smouldering wreckage of the Renault. ‘How long ago?’
‘We got here about ten minutes ago,’ Chapman told him. ‘It was like that when we arrived.’
‘No sign of the driver?’
‘No. I knew her, too.’
‘You knew her?’
‘We checked who the vehicle was registered to. Nikki Cross. Lovely girl. She came from Broughton. Christ knows where she is now.’
‘From what I can see in that wreck I wouldn’t hold out much hope of seeing her again,’ McGill said flatly. He fumbled in his pocket for his mobile and jabbed some buttons. But the display screen merely glowed weakly for a moment, then faded completely. ‘Not again,’ he hissed irritably.
‘Are you having trouble getting a signal?’ Chapman asked.
‘I’m having trouble getting anything at all. Even on landlines there’s appalling interference.’
‘I know, we’ve been getting it on our radios all night. There’s a call box just down the road – you might have more luck there.’
‘Thanks,’ McGill said, turning to look at the flattened and charred hedges on either side of the road. ‘Any idea what could have done that?’ he murmured, gesturing towards the destruction.
Chapman merely shook his head.
McGill had his own theories about what had bulldozed its way through the hedges and enveloped the car but he thought it best to keep them to himself at present. Trying to convince a policeman that some kind of primordial force was crawling across the countryside, consuming objects in its path, might not be appreciated at the moment, he reasoned.
‘We’ve seen other stuff burned up like that tonight,’ Chapman said.
‘Like what?’ McGill demanded, the hairs on the back of his neck rising.
‘Other cars and sections of road,’ Chapman informed him.
‘Where?’
‘In other parts of Broughton.’
‘When did you see these?’
‘Earlier tonight. The damage looked very similar.’
The knot of muscles at the side of McGill’s jaw pulsed nervously. ‘You said there was a public call box near here,’ he reminded the policeman. ‘I have to use a phone now.’
‘It’s down the road about a mile. You can’t miss it,’ Chapman told him.
McGill was already heading for his car. As he reached it he turned and looked back at the watching policeman. ‘Seal this area off,’ he called. ‘And if there are any houses in the vicinity tell the occupants to stay inside. In fact, get a message to the other men on your force and get them to spread the word around Broughton. Tell everyone to get inside and stay there.’
Chapman was about to ask why but McGill slammed his door and started the engine. He swung the car around and sped off into the night.
Fifty-Nine
‘DOCTOR ROYSTON.’
The American scientist heard his name echo across the laboratory and he turned slowly towards the owner of the voice that had called it, aware that there was an edge to the tone. He knew without even looking that the voice belonged to Professor John Elliot and he also suspected that Elliot’s mood wasn’t of the best. Something else he’d come to expect during the last few days.
‘What have I done this time?’ he murmured under his breath.
As the professor descended the stairs from the upper level of the laboratory his footsteps echoed through the large room.
‘Adam,’ the older man said as he moved closer to Royston. ‘What’s been going on in here?’
‘We’ve just taken the cobalt out of the pile, John—’ Royston began.
‘I’m fully aware of that,’ the professor snapped. ‘On whose authority?’
‘I tried to find you but you were otherwise engaged,’ Royston said.
‘Work of that kind is not supposed to be undertaken without my express permission,’ the professor reminded him.
‘As I said,’ Royston went on, attempting to keep his tone even, ‘I would have waited until you gave your permission but you were busy.’
‘Yes, I was busy speaking to the head of the Atomic Energy Commission in London, attempting yet again to explain what’s been happening here.’
‘You were lucky you could speak to anyone, consider ing the state of the phones,’ Royston reminded him.
‘That’s as maybe,’ the professor replied irritably. ‘The fact is that you still undertook work that was unauthorised. Do you know how long it takes to get that pile started again?’ He looked at his son reproachfully. ‘And you stood by and let this happen, Peter?’
‘Peter assisted me in removing the cobalt from the rods,’ Royston announced.
‘Well, he shouldn’t have,’ the older man said. ‘He shouldn’t even have been in here in the first place.’
‘I was trying to help,’ Peter said.
‘Your job at this base is administration,’ the older man snapped.
‘There wasn’t time to wait until you signed the appropriate forms or gave your permission,’ Royston insisted. ‘I acted on my own initiative. No harm has been done.’
‘That isn’t the point,’ the professor said. ‘There are routines and protocols that should be followed on a base like this and when materials such as this are concerned.’
‘Everything was conducted with the utmost regard for safety,’ Royston went on.
‘You put the cobalt bombardment weeks behind schedule.’
Royston nodded, tiring of this tirade.
‘What’s done is done, John,’ he said wearily. ‘Next time I’ll make sure I get an order in triplicate signed by you before I do anything – is that OK?’
‘Entirely on your own initiative you break in on an official experiment,’ the professor continued. ‘You deactivate the pile without consulting me. This isn’t your workshop, this is a government establishment.’
‘I’m well aware of that,’ Royston told him. ‘You’re constantly making me aware of that fact, John. But a fact that you seem to forget is that you have no seniority over me.’
‘I run this establishment,’ the professor snapped.
‘You supervise an establishment that is run by the army,’ Royston reminded him. ‘There’s a difference. I take my orders from people like Major Cartwright because he’s the one with the real authority around here.’
‘That may be – but there’s always the question of ethical behaviour,’ said the professor.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Royston sighed dismissively. ‘If you want a written apology I’ll have it on your desk in the morning. I promise never to act without the full permission of the director again. How’s that? Humble enough for you?’
The two men glared at each other for a moment longer. Then Royston turned his head when he heard the phone in one corner of the laboratory ringing.
‘I’ll get it,’ Peter Elliot announced, heading across to the phone and lifting the receiver. He recoiled as a savage blast of static filled his ear. ‘Hello. Hello. You’ll have to speak louder – it’s a terrible line.’
At the other end of the line the voice barely penetrated the haze of static but it cut through enough for the caller to identify himself.
‘Oh, hello, Mr McGill,’ Peter answered. ‘I thought you’d gone back to London. No, Doctor Royston is busy at the moment. This is Peter Elliot.’
McGill tried to explain what he’d seen on the outskirts of Broughton.
Peter gripped the receiver more tightly, his expression darkening. ‘I see,’ he murmured. ‘Wait a minute, I’ll get him.’ He allowed the phone to dangle by its cord and hurried over to where Royston and Peter’s father were still facing each other. ‘Doctor Royston,’ he cut in. ‘It’s Mr McGill on the phone. It appears that what you were afraid of has happened. That thing from the fissure has just killed someone in a car. The line’s terrible but I’m sure he said they’d been killed in the same way as the soldiers whose remains you found inside the fissure. He said they’d been melted.’
Royston shot an angry glance at the professor, then hurried to the phone. ‘Mac, can you hear me?’ he said, cursing the interference on the line. ‘It’s Adam. What the hell is going on out there?’
McGill told him as best he could.
‘And where have these incidents happened?’ Royston asked.
Through a haze of static again, McGill told him.
Royston pulled a pen and a piece of paper from his jacket and scribbled details down as the other man relayed the information.
‘OK, I’ve got that,’ he said finally. ‘Where are you now, Mac?’
McGill told him.
‘All right, listen to me: make your way back here to the base as soon as you can,’ Royston instructed. ‘Got that?’
There was a fearfully loud explosion of static on the line.
‘Get back here now, Mac,’ Royston repeated.
Now there was only static. The line was dead. He replaced the receiver and turned to the professor who had ambled over towards him.
‘John, do you have a local survey map in your office?’ Royston enquired.
‘Yes,’ the professor told him.
‘We need to take a look at it now.’
‘What’s going on?’ the older man asked.
‘Show me that map and I’ll try to explain,’ Royston said, already heading for the door.
Sixty
‘THIS POINT RIGHT here is the fissure.’
Royston pressed the point of the pencil into the map that was spread out on Professor John Elliot’s desk. As the professor and Peter watched he drew the pencil along the edge of the ruler he’d also laid on the map. He pressed the point in again.
‘Here is the hospital,’ he said. Then he did the same again at another point on the map directly in line with the first two locations he’d indicated. ‘According to what Mac told me on the phone this is where the burned-out car was found.’ He shifted the ruler, sliding it across the map and drawing another line against its straight edge. ‘Over here is the base and, if we follow the line, right here is the old tower where the Dickinson boy was burned.’
‘Do you think this thing from the fissure is following some kind of pattern?’ Peter Elliot asked.
Royston shrugged.
‘Whatever it’s doing it can obviously sense radioactivity and once it does nothing can stop it,’ he said. ‘It makes straight for it and then returns to the fissure. And from these lines it’s pretty clear that it returns by the same route.’
‘Don’t most predators hunt in the same areas every time?’ Peter Elliot offered.
‘That’s right,’ Royston confirmed. ‘And this thing is no different.’
‘Don’t you think we’re attributing qualities to it that it might not actually possess?’ the professor interjected. ‘It’s an amorphous mass of matter. Calling it a predator hardly seems appropriate.’
‘It feeds and it hunts what it feeds on, John,’ Royston told him. ‘It has a food source that it has to consume and it does just that. In my book that makes it predatory.’ He looked down at the map again. ‘Mac said that the burned out-car was here.’ He pressed the pencil into the map again. ‘Now, if we extend the line to the fissure through this point then somewhere along this extended line is where it’s headed.’ He jabbed the point of the pencil into the map, indicating an area they all saw only too clearly: Broughton Green Military Research Facility.
‘It’s coming here,’ Peter Elliot said quietly.
‘That’s right,’ Royston exclaimed. ‘It’s on its way to the biggest meal of its life.’
‘You can’t know that for sure,’ the professor said.
‘It’s a logical assumption, John,’ Royston exclaimed. ‘The amount of energy here that it could consume makes this base the next logical target.’
‘If that’s true then Major Cartwright should be informed,’ the professor stated.
‘I agree,’ Royston said, nodding. ‘He might have some ideas about how to stop this thing.’
‘According to you that’s impossible,’ John Elliot said.
‘Let’s get Cartwright in here, see what he thinks,’ Royston suggested, watching as Peter reached for the internal phone on the professor’s desk. He hit the required button and waited.
McGill was sure that there were more soldiers than usual in evidence as he pulled the car up to the main gate of Broughton Green Military Research Facility.
There were four men in the concrete building that stood close to the main entrance, all of whom looked at him questioningly as he sat outside the large wire-mesh gate with his car’s engine idling. At first none of them moved towards him so he hit the horn a couple of times. ‘Come on,’ he shouted.
One of them finally headed out of the gatehouse towards him.
‘Open the gate,’ McGill called.
‘I need to see your pass, sir,’ the private said.
‘Oh come on, you know me. Open up,’ McGill replied.
‘Sorry, sir, I have to see your pass first,’ the private insisted.
Muttering under his breath, McGill dug inside his jacket and pulled out his ID.
‘Sorry, Mr McGill,’ the private told him. ‘But there are procedures I have to follow.’
