Quatermass (27 page)

“Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round!”

Of course everybody knew about Ringstone Round. Even if you didn’t swallow what they said had happened there.

“Huffity, Puffity!”

They were yelling it out, fierce.

Badders were up on the barricade to watch. Blues too, on theirs. The marchers started beckoning to them, each to their own kind. A couple of Badders suddenly took off and jumped down to join the march.

The bodies of the shot Planet People were still there on the ground but nobody took a particle of notice. They just walked over them.

“Huff-ity, Puff-ity, Ring-stone Round!”

More and more started dropping down from both barricades. Some even threw their guns away but most didn’t. Still, they weren’t doing anything with them, weren’t waving them or threatening each other. It was a truly amazing thing.

The last girl Badder went scrambling down with her bow clutched in her hand, but it was as if it was something she couldn’t let go, that was all.

The barricades were empty.

They seemed to be coming from all directions, the uneasy pay cops reported. Emerging from the no-go areas, whole columns of them. Incredible to see traditional enemies stamping and chanting their way along together. And the Planet People weaving excitedly among them as if they were delighted to have so many new converts.

Cracked, neglected pavements rattled under their tread.

Everywhere they were met with astonishment. Looters about their usual business dropped their sacks and ran.

Pay cops stood aside in dark doorways or found urgent reason to join their colleagues in trucks and drive off to report.

At almost every junction and street end more little groups appeared, Badders or Blues, puzzled by the noise, astounded to find who were making it. As often as not they ran to join the march.

Stringy columns met and merged, blended by the thumping rhythm of the verse that had travelled through the land like an instruction.

“. . . So pull up your britches right up to your chin,

And when you are ready, then we can begin!”

Obscene versions were improvized and flung across from column to column. There were caperings and gestures to match.

But nobody asked where they were bound for. Nobody questioned the direction. Few dropped out.

At the front of the first column there were half a dozen leaders. Some were Planet People, swinging plumb-bobs. A couple were dressed in blue, with killer bolases on the end of cutting wires, but now swinging them to the same purpose as the People.

The direction of the march was becoming clear. Ahead loomed the towers of Wembley Stadium.

The meeting had been summoned in a hurry. But it was not for the reason they expected.

Grock Jervis had had a vision.

He was certainly in a strange state, Quatermass saw that immediately. The big clown-face was heavily flushed, the eyes unable to keep still in their sockets. He was seized with an acute tension which he believed to be a state of ecstasy.

The vision he had had was not entirely his own, he confessed. In fact, strictly speaking, it was not his at all. It had been communicated to him by certain youthful companions who had experienced it more directly.

“But I shared it!” cried Grock. “In the most profound way. And out of that state of . . . yes, rapture . . . I have to bring this message.” He paused for a moment and then said: “Everything’s all right!”

He’s gone mad, thought Quatermass.

“All right after all, quite all right!” Grock was babbling, as if his thoughts on the matter stopped there. “We need only humble ourselves, only trust. We must lay our imperfect intellects aside. We are the prisoners in Plato’s cave but we are about to be set free! This I know! We are in the presence of great glory!”

He sat there nodding at everybody round the table, grinning and even pulling at his lower lip. Not just clown but holy idiot.

Quatermass could not stand it. “Sir, you must stop this talk.”

“Professor—!”

“There are some desperate matters to discuss—”

“Have you not listened? Not understood?” The blubber lips were hanging open in appeal.

It had to be said, then. “Don’t talk about Plato’s cave, sir! Don’t insult Plato. What you’re showing us is . . . a besotted old gentleman who’s swallowed all the delusions of his favourites!”

He had gone too far.

Greek’s face was changing colour slowly from red to mottled purple. He gave a curious sound, a thin whine. The clown features all seemed to separate from each other. They were like the plastic noses and eyes and ears that children used to buy and stick on a potato to make a funny face. They were coming apart because the potato had shrunk. About to drop off.

Complete terror. Quatermass had never seen it so clearly in anyone.

Saliva started to run out of Grock’s mouth.

David Hatherley sat forward in his chair as if about to speak. Quatermass would have been grateful for any interruption now. But Hatherley said nothing. He was watching Grock.

“I’m sorry,” Quatermass said, very quietly. Keep it practical now. “I thought we were here to try and do something about . . . the stadium. Perhaps we can just . . .”

Grock moved violently as if he had been hit from behind. A great burp of air burst from his lips. The plump hands thrashed as he collapsed.

Quatermass felt as if he had killed him.

They were all round Grock, pulling his chair clear of the table, ripping his collar open. There were unconvincing cries of reassurance. Somebody with a claim to medical knowledge was thumping Greek’s chest. He was still in his chair as they rolled it out into the passage. He was too heavy to lift. Voices were calling solicitously. They echoed and faded.

“That was coming,” said David Hatherley.

There was no pity in it. He started slowly after his uncle, as if to be in at the death, to make sure it happened.

“Tiberius gone. Now we’ve got Caligula,” whispered Helen Peacher.

Annie turned to Quatermass.

“Ask him!” she said. “It’s up to him now. He must.”

Quatermass caught up with Hatherley in the doorway.

“The stadium,” he said.

“What?”

“What can be done?”

Hatherley took a moment to come back to the present. “Nothing,” he said. “No action.”

“But—it’s still not too late. The place can be closed off.”

“Professor, do you really suggest Wembley Stadium, of all places, is an ancient site?”

Quatermass held down his anger. “The sacred turf, they used to call it,” he said. “I wonder what’s underneath!”

It took Annie to break the deadlock.

She came after them at a run and caught at Hatherley, pulling him round and striking him in the chest. “Oh, do something, man!” she cried. “Stop them!”

Hatherley actually came with them in Annie’s Land-Rover. A protective army pig drove in front, with the special-duty squad under young Torrance.

Hatherley seemed bemused.

He was still adjusting to the news, just before they left, of Grock Jervis’s death. A lot of new responsibilities would fall on him now, none of them pleasant.

Before long they were out of the patrolled area. You could tell by the potholes, which grew suddenly worse. They saw running figures, the tail of a column. Annie felt glad of their armed escort.

Hatherley talked half-absently about Wembley Stadium.

“It’s always been allowed. You could say it’s an institution.”

“Not like this,” said Quatermass.

“Well, the game . . . I suppose that just ceased to matter. In fact it’s minimal, vestigial. Just the first few minutes, if even that. Let’s face it, the whole thing’s been encouraged as an outlet, a bit of harmless blood-letting.”

“Officially encouraged?”

“Well, we would accept a few hundred casualties.” He considered. “One could look on it as a culling of the stock. A very minor cull.”

Annie’s hands clamped on the wheel. “Oh, that was us,” she whispered. “That’s what we came to!”

Quatermass was thinking about numbers.

“A few hundred?” he said. “That place can hold a hundred thousand.”

They were in sight of the stadium towers. The sight that must have gladdened the hearts of countless fans in the past as they came by coach or trudging, to watch the Cup Final. Whatever other games were played there, football was the great one. And the Cup Final was its climax.

There were running figures alongside them now, jeering and chanting. For the first time Quatermass saw the gangs without feeling at their mercy, the ragged runners in dreadlocks and multi-blue. Some still had weapons but they were only using them to wave round their heads in celebration. And Planet People ran with them. Young girls. Children.

“They don’t look so very many,” Annie said. “There were reports of thousands and thousands.”

Quatermass’s heart sank.

“We’re too late. They’re inside.” He turned to Hatherley. “Please, you must try to get them out of there, get them dispersed. I know it won’t be easy but for God’s sake—perhaps Torrance can put a call out for reinforcements?”

The iron pig was already pulling in near the turnstiles. Annie slowed. All round the stadium entrance was a milling crowd, the same strange ill-assortment, yelling and chanting.

Young Torrance came hurrying across from the pig. His squad followed, guns at the ready.

As Hatherley opened the door to get out the roar from the stadium hit them like a shock wave. A huge rolling thunder of frenzied voices.

“It is!” cried Annie. “It’s full!”

“Try!” shouted Quatermass, but Hatherley was already on his way towards the entrance with the little group of soldiers.

They listened. There were sporadic shots from inside the stadium, topping even the uproar. But those were probably just expressions of excitement. They made no difference to the colossal, slow chant.

“It’s the rhyme!” Quatermass said. “Hear it? That old nursery rhyme?” He could match the words to that bellowing wave of sound.

“Huff . . . ity . . . puff . . . ity . . . Ring . . . stone . . . Round . . .”

A score of yards away Hatherley appeared to be arguing with some of the crowd. Annie breathed impatiently: “Oh, get on with it, man.” They could feel the noise pushing at them. It was oppressive, unnerving.

Hatherley turned and looked back at the Land-Rover.

Those round him were turning too, shaking out their dreadlocks, shifting and twitching inside their ponchos, tugging at blue cummerbunds. The squad of young soldiers were looking round as well.

Quatermass was puzzled. “Does he want our help?”

But Hatherley didn’t look as if he was in trouble. He turned to Captain Torrance and said something to him. Torrance nodded. He raised his submachine gun.

He pointed it straight at the Land-Rover.

For a moment Quatermass failed to take it in. He saw the movement, the gun, but his brain did not respond.

Annie’s did. From some basic instinct she had kept her engine running. Now she slammed it into reverse.

The burst of bullets hit the windscreen at its edge. Metal squealed. Chips of glass flew everywhere.

People were scattering behind the Land-Rover, screeching. It bumped into something, a person or an object, there was no telling. As the car rocked round, then plunged forward again, Quatermass saw Torrance and his squad running through the crowd, others joining in with them. A spatter of shots hit the armoured bonnet. More glass shattered. Annie was losing control of the heavy vehicle as she swerved it past gibbering faces. Walls—steel barriers—they seemed to be blocked in every direction.

A sign loomed. It was unlit but the decayed lettering was still clear enough:
CAR PARK.

The car shot down a crumbling ramp.

Annie’s headlights shone across a watery floor, empty lanes between slimy concrete pillars. The only cars down here were a few derelict wrecks.

“Keep going,” shouted Quatermass. “There’ll be a way out—there always is!”

They swung in a wide circle, weaving round the pillars. A sign read
EXIT
and Annie made for it. There ahead was the long-abandoned checkout kiosk. It was blocked by two crashed, rusting cars.

She skidded to a halt.

Quatermass glanced round. Their pursuers were coming down the ramp, mere shadows in the weak reflected light.

“We’re trapped,” he said.

“Not yet!” Annie swung the Land-Rover. Go straight at them rather than wait. Concrete columns flashed in the headlamps’ beam. She had her foot hard down when the car grazed a column and skidded in the slime. It spun about. They were going at full speed backwards, out of control.

Quatermass ducked. The Land-Rover struck full into a pillar with a dreadful jarring thud. He heard Annie scream.

They had stopped. The engine had cut.

He pulled himself painfully up. The only sound now was the roaring chant from above. It seemed to press down through the very concrete pillars.

The headlamps still shone. They picked out the pursuers moving from the ramp two hundred yards away.

Annie groaned. Her head was lolling back in a way he had never seen. Her neck was snapped. He tried to move her but she gasped with the pain and thrust him away.

He got the door open and tumbled into the slime.

He started to run for his life.

A desperate slither to the nearest pillar and clinging and pulling himself round behind it, and peering, and plunging on again. His hands were down in green wetness, his knees and feet skidding.

They had reached the car.

A glance showed him frantic figures there. Annie cried out, protesting agony.

He dragged himself behind another pillar. Gasping. Done.

Then it happened.

Searing light cut off the whole space he had traversed. It stabbed down with a thunderous, bursting crackle. Slime exploded everywhere into steam.

Quatermass crouched with his hands pressed to his head, thumbs dug into ears. The light beat through the thickness of the hands and through the eyelids beneath them, a red dazzle of his blood.

A pinpoint of consciousness ticked away behind. Keep counting. Bear it. Count twenty seconds . . . twenty point two . . .