Omega (41 page)

'Hey, Kath - shut up - listen...'

Then Kathy heard it too and straightened, incredulous. All along the line the girls were stopping their work, staring towards the drive. It couldn't be
...
but it was,
engines -
a big van and four motor-cycles, winding up from the road-Then they were all running, excited, Miss Hooley with them and across the field they could see Big Molly and her lot running too, and Miss Simms and the others from the cowshed.

Doreen, as she ran, felt a flash of unease. Something about the way the van drew up, two men jumping down from it to left and right, and the motor-bikes halting spread out in a neat
are
, two on each side of the van - all happening together, like a military operation. . . . Don't be silly, she told herself, these days people do behave like soldiers if they've any sense, keep together, ready for anything, eyes open. . . . She kept running, Kathy beside her and soon everybody was gathered in the drive, staring at the visitors.

'My name's Walter Crane,' the man who was obviously the leader was telling Molly. Doreen didn't like him; his eyes never seemed to blink and he stood with his feet apart like a poised boxer.

'And mine is Marie Andrews,' Molly said. So Big Molly isn't happy about him either, Doreen thought; I've only heard her use her proper name about twice, when she was upstaging people. 'We are what is left of Woodbury Croft School. Where are you from?'

'North of here . . . Is this all of you?' He made an economical gesture to include the assembled women and girls.

Taking him very literally (another upstaging sign, Doreen knew) Molly did a roll-call with her eyes. 'Yes, all of us. . . . You're very lucky to have petrol, aren't you?'

'It's Government issue. From a special concealed dump.'

'Oh? Then you have some official function?'

'You could call it that, Miss Andrews.' He snapped his fingers. In a moment, all his five followers had guns in their hands. Automatics appeared from inside anoraks and two light machine-guns from motor-cycle pannier bags. Several of the girls screamed but Walter Crane snapped 'Shut up!' with such frightening authority that the screams became mere whimpers. Doreen, who had not screamed, remem
bered her mother's training: If
anything frightening happens, breathe slowly and keep your nerve.
Doreen breathed slowly, taking Kathy's hand in her own. She realized that her instinct about the
arc
of motor-cycles had been right; the raiders had them neatly penned.

'And what is that function, Mr Crane?' Big Molly asked. 'Terrorizing schoolgirls?'

He still did not blink. 'Our function, Miss Andrews, is rooting out witches.'

Big Molly must be breathing deeply too, Doreen thought, because she kept her cool splendidly. 'Indeed. May I see your authority for that? I presume you have one.'

'Certainly.' He had not yet produced a gun himself but now he did, and fired a single shot into the air. More screams, even more quickly smothered. When the echo had died away, he said: 'That is our authority.'

'A typical one.'

'Oh, don't misjudge us, Miss Andrews. There is always a proper trial.'

'I'm sure there is. With you, Mr Crane, as judge and jury.'

'You're misjudging us again. I am the judge. Four of my friends are the jury; allow me to introduce them - Beaver, Mac, Jake and Fatso. And Garry over there is the executioner.'

Breathe very slowly. Very, very slowly. And don't scream, whatever you do.
Kathy's convulsive grip almost cracked Doreen's fingers but she was managing to keep silent, too.

'You're the headmistress, I take it, Miss Andrews?'

‘I
am.'

'Then since everybody knows this is a witch school, you're the one to stand trial...' He looked around, unhurried. 'The netball field, I think. Garry, bring what we need from the van. The rest of you, take everybody over there.'

Most of the girls were by now numb with shock and it was a stumbling proces
sion that made its way to the ne
tball field, flanked by the four gunmen. When they reached it, all but Big Molly were herded together in a group facing one of the tall posts.

'Which of you is Miss Andrews' second-in-command?'

Barbara, who had been trying to soothe one of the youngest of the girls, stepped forward without speaking.

'Your name?'

'Barbara Simms.'

'Then only one sentence is possible. Executioner, do your duty.'

. When the man called Garry flung the canful of petrol all over Molly's clothes, the screaming really started; and when he set light to it, most of the girls hid their faces, clutching each other. Even Kathy buried her head in Doreen's shoulder; only Doreen, summoning strength she didn't believe she possessed, stood upright and wide-eyed, trying to pour her soul's help into Big Molly at the moment of flaming death, trying to remember in one impossible instant all that her parents had taught her about fighting against evil. She believed, then and afterwards, that her help reached Big Molly, for Big Molly never screamed, only opened her mouth in a single gasp which became without pause the rictus of physical death. Big Molly herself was gone.

A few minutes later, the twenty survivors lined the wall of the gym, five gunmen facing them like watchful NCOs while Walter Crane inspected them.

'Right,' he said when he had finished walking along the line. 'You're witches, every one of you - we know that. And you're damn lucky not to be going the same way as
she
did. Remember that - and remember we can always come back another day. Right now, we're letting you off lightly, but it'd be wrong to let you off altogether. So I'll tell you what is going to happen. Six of you are coming with us, for penal servitude on behalf of the others.'

Doreen called out, loudly and deliberately: 'And just what do you mean by that, you sadistic, murdering bastard?'

Miss Simms, beside her, tried to shush her but it was too late, it had been said, and Doreen felt better for her defiance. Walter Crane merely smiled and walked unhurriedly across to her. He looked her up and down, slowly, unblinking as ever. 'Beaver, come here.'

One of the gunmen, who looked more muscle than brain, joined him. 'Yes, Wally?'

'You wanted a redhead. How about this one?'

Beaver repeated Wally's up-and-down inspection but less coolly. 'Not bad.'

'Then as she's apparently too stupid to realize what six men mean by penal servitude for six girls - strip the bitch and show her.' He pulled Barbara Simms out of the line and once more held his gun to the back of her neck. 'The other boys can hold her down. And, girls - remember what I said about blowing Miss Simms' head off. Because if the rest of you so much as move, I'll do it.'

The van bumped and wove along the country lanes with the six of them locked in the back. Every few minutes Wally slid open the inspection window from the driver's cab to glance at them before sliding it shut again; otherwise they were on their own.

Doreen barely felt the pain of her ruptured hymen or the bruises on her wrists and ankles; she was transfigured by a magnificent hatred, a beaut
iful and treasured hatred, ice-
cold, calculating and patient. She
was armed with a new, strange de
adliness and she was glad of it. Everything, for the first time in her sixteen and three-quarter years, was black and white without a hint of grey; fierce love for her friends, alive or dead, fierce and merciless hatred for her enemies - the six men with the guns. It was all so simple.

She looked around the other five girls and knew, with a confidence that transcended pride, that she was their leader. Wally himself had picked Kathy, of which Doreen and Kathy were both glad, because grim as their outlook was they needed each other. Mac - the humourless fanatical one - had chosen Gina, slow and cow-like and looking more bewildered than frightened. Jake, whose apparently colourless personality Doreen could not make out yet, had picked Helen, a doll-like fifteen-year-old; he would find she had a fiery temper. Helen seemed to be bearing up well. The one Doreen was most concerned about (she had one protective arm round her as they travelled) was little Muriel, who was only thirteen and had been selected by the obese and sweaty Fatso. She was trying not to cry but was trembling uncontrollably, and no wonder. The sixth, Miriam, an eighteen-year-old Jewess, had been picked by the executioner Garry. Miriam, Doreen felt, would be a tower of strength for she was conscious of her inheritance, and two millennia of ghetto wisdom burned in the brown eyes which gazed into Doreen's across the van and seemed to be saying 'This is nothing new, my friend'. Doreen was grateful that Miriam
was
her closest friend apart from Kathy. The three of them should be able to hold the others together.

Muriel turned in Doreen's arm and moaned: 'What are we going to
do?’

'Do?' Doreen glanced at the the inspection window to make sure it was
closed. 'We're going to do exactl
y as we're told and be good, obedient, submissive little prisoners, until the chance we'll be looking for comes. And when it does, God help those bastards.'

Philip's little group had been on the move for a week, living off the land and not quite knowing what they were looking for. They knew they should settle somewhere, with the winter coming on, and preferably in a community of some kind, particularly as they had the two children, Finola and Mark, to look after. They wondered what conditions would be like in the smaller towns, now that the Ma
dness was
over, and had taken a wary look at Kettering and Market Harborough. Kettering was silent and virtually empty, with occasional survivors always scuttling out of sight as soon as they saw them; much of what had not already been destroyed by the earthquake had since been gutted by fire, which seemed to have been widespread in several parts of the town - though how the fires had started, they could only guess. They had managed to scavenge one or two things which they needed from ruined shops and houses, though earlier looters had left little worth scavenging. Their most useful finds were enough heavy-duty polythene to turn the cart into a covered wagon, and - for Tonia - a cassette recorder, several cassettes and a whole box of batteries. Tonia, though now readerless, had all the frustrated instincts of a communicator and it cheered her up a lot to be able to keep a recorded journal, and it cheered the others to be able to tease her about it.

Kettering they found insupportably depressing. Market Harborough was not merely depressing, it was hostile. There seemed to be a few more people there than in Kettering, but they, too, flitted on the edge of vision. In one street, three or four arrows were shot at them - not very efficiently, because only one hit the wagon, burying its head in the woodwork. They put on the best speed Bunty could manage and headed out of town. A couple of hundred metres farther on, they were fired at by a rifle from somewhere behind them. The intention was apparently merely to hasten them on their way, because the bullets ricocheted off the pavement exactly the same distance to each side of them, suggesting that the marksman could have hit them if he had wanted to. They took the hint and kept going.

But the chief reason that would have decided them against taking refuge in a town in any case was the profusion of corpses, in various stages of decomposition. Most of them, if they were recent enough for the mad and the sane to be distinguishable, see
med to have been madmen - but
by no means all of them. The stench of death was everywhere and doubtless the disease-germs of corruption as well.

'Anyone who stays in those fever-traps must be crazy,' Betty said, 'or else too stupid to be able to survive where they can't find cans to open. For God's sake, let's stay in the country.'

Nobody argued. Finola said, 'The horses don't like towns, anyway.'

Some of the villages were corpse-strewn like the towns and had been abandoned once the looters had done their work. But one or two had been cleared of bodies and colonized by refugees. These varied in their reaction to new people who came their way. One, a few kilometres from Market Harborough, had just had two typhus deaths and would admit no newcomers unless they quarantined themselves for three weeks in a designated cottage. Another was occupied by eleven men and three women, two of whom were over fifty; Philip's party were urged to stay a little too warmly, and Betty and Tonia had no difficulty in persuading Philip to move on. Another would have welcomed them and they were tempted, but although friendly the villagers seemed shiftless and impractical, and their ability to forge a working community seemed doubtful. At another, they were simply turned back at a street barricade without explanation.

They were beginning to wonder if, after all, they would have to find a small farm they could run by themselves, when they met the Ramsays.