Squelch (15 page)

‘The caterpillars would follow them,’ Ginny stated her opinion bluntly. ‘They’ll not stay behind without food.’

‘We’re thinking along the same lines, Ginny. I favour leaving the food supply where it is. It’s the best way to contain the problem.’

‘By “food supply”,’ the Reverend Davidson intervened, his disapproval undisguised, ‘you presumably mean human beings.’

‘Myself included,’ he pointed out. ‘However, what in fact they’re planning is nothing less than chemical warfare. Large-scale spraying to start at dawn tomorrow. People will be warned to stay indoors and keep their windows closed.’

The old man shook his head sadly.

‘That means killing everything!’ Ginny exclaimed as the full import of his words sank in. ‘Most insects, anyway. Birds will be poisoned, crops will have to be destroyed,
and there are bound to be human casualties too, whatever the precautions.’

‘Now you understand why I’m telling you,’ Jeff said calmly. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do, but what other solution is there? People are dying. Well over a hundred already.’

The bleeper at his belt began to sound suddenly, cutting into the moment of terrible silence which had followed his words. He asked the Reverend Davidson if he could use his telephone and followed him through to a room at the front of the vicarage, leaving Ginny alone.

She examined the map again, comparing it with the photocopied pages of ‘sightings’, as the attacks were euphemistically headed. Thank God Lesley had taken Phuong and the girls off to Wiltshire, well from the caterpillars’ hunting grounds. Because that’s what the map was indicating –
hunting grounds
, with human beings as the prey.

When the Reverend Davidson did not return immediately, she decided to go back into the work station to take another look at their captive moth. Once again – as on the previous night – she found it poised close to the glass with its wings spread out to their full span, as if wishing to dazzle her with their magnificence.

(And hadn’t they succeeded on their very first encounter when they had swarmed in her garden to welcome her?)

If only she dared reach inside the tank to grab it and crumple it to fragments in her hand! Or trample on that tubby little body… squelch it under her boot…

Remembering how it was moths just like this which had actually conned her into admiring them, loving them even, she hated it all the more vehemently.

‘Ginny! Ah, there you are!’ Jeff came into me room, his face grim. ‘Prison visiting, I see.’

‘You could call it that.’ Obviously he too thought of
them as more than mere insects.

‘Listen, I must go. There’s been another mass attack. On a church this time, during morning service. God knows how many people hurt.’

‘I’ll come with you!’ she blurted out without hesitation. Then a quick picture of yesterday’s nightmare flashed into her mind. ‘I may not be much use but –’

‘Rubbish! Of course you must come. The more experience we both acquire with these things, the better.’ He stopped to stare past her in astonishment. ‘Maggie Thatcher, look at that!’

Inside the glass tank the moth had become suddenly agitated. It flew up against the net in repeated attempts to get out, emitting a stream of urgent squeaks which sounded like desperate calls for help.

‘Oh dear! Excuse me!’ the Reverend Davidson exclaimed, pushing between them. He took a rectangle of hardboard from the heap of oddments under the bench and placed it on top of the tank. Almost immediately, the moth calmed down, settling on the bottom. ‘That cuts out the light, but unfortunately deprives it of air at the same time. I’ll not be able to leave it there too long.’

‘As if it understood!’ Ginny observed, fascinated.

‘Holy, holy, holy…’ the congregation of St Michael’s sang that Sunday morning, led – for her voice was a half-beat ahead of the rest – by Mrs Thompson, a confident soprano, from her regular pew towards the rear of the church.

‘Two full backs and a goalie!’ Mark joined in solemnly, nudging his sister Debs.

She giggled.

‘Will you two children behave yourselves?’ their mother hissed at them, red-faced with annoyance.

Mark put on his most earnest face and took another sideways look at his sister who was pressing her lips
together trying not to laugh. Then he raised his eyebrows, imitating the vicar, and the laughter spluttered out of her despite herself.

Their mother looked daggers at them. He felt her hand grip his shoulder and – still singing the hymn – she steered him in front of her until by the
A-a-amen
she had succeeded in placing herself between them. As they sat down he realised the vicar’s gaze was on him. He knew what that probably meant – another talking-to, probably about showing respect in the House of God.

‘You mean God doesn’t want people to laugh?’ he’d argued last time, outraged at the idea. ‘Funny sort of God if you can’t laugh!’

‘Mark, you’re only eleven years old,’ the vicar had informed him patiently, as if he didn’t know already. ‘You’ll understand better when you’re older.’

But he had the answer to that one ready. ‘The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light,’ he’d quoted triumphantly, leaving the vicar flummoxed.

They’d been doing Luke in scripture at school and he’d had to write that bit out a hundred times for talking in class.

He was not a bad old stick, the vicar. At least everyone knew he
was
a vicar, not like that trendy curate they had last year who fancied himself as a lead guitarist and went round in leathers, scaring the old ladies with his motorbike. A real flop, that one. No, if you’ve got to be a vicar you may as well be a real one, and he talked about those Bible stories as if they genuinely happened, which was good.

Mark stared around the church while the vicar’s voice droned on, reading prayers out of a book. Praying is talking to God, the scripture teacher had told them; he hadn’t mentioned reading. Last year his class had done a project on this church, how Oliver Cromwell’s men had
smashed everything up, the bits they hadn’t pinched. He’d told Debs about it, adding a dash of gory detail to ‘fill out the background’ – something his English teacher was always rabbiting on about – and she’d cried, so he’d got into trouble over that as well.

It was the twelfth commandment: Whatever thou shalt do wilt land thee in the shit. Amen.

Above the pulpit was a canopy – Victorian, he’d learned from the project – and something was moving just above it. He nudged Debs to point it out, forgetting for a second that his mother sat next to him now. He pointed all the same, but she pursed her lips, shaking her head in disapproval.

‘A bird,’ he whispered.

It flew over to the choir stalls, landing on the decorative stone tracery (15th century: he’d got a mark for that) and a sunbeam from the stained glass window fell on its outspread wings.

‘Mum, it’s a butterfly!’ he breathed, nudging her again with his elbow. ‘A big one – look!’

His mother saw it and nodded, putting her finger to her lips as a warning to him not to continue chattering, but he noticed her eyes were on the butterfly now.

The next hymn was announced and the congregation stood up, fumbling through their books as the organ played the first few chords. The choir prepared to start, but once again Mrs Thompson beat them to it with a loud vibrato note.

Then she faltered and her note rose in pitch to become a high, raucous scream which brought out gooseflesh all over him. Everyone turned round.

‘What’s the matter with her?’ Mum demanded anxiously, stretching up on her toes to peer over the heads of the other worshippers. ‘Can you see?’

Mark scrambled on to the pew but not even Mrs Thompson’s hat was visible any longer. ‘Maybe she’s
sitting down, Mum!’ he shouted, jumping up and down on the seat for a better view.

‘Mark, will you get down!’ his mother scolded him in her best I-can-take-no-more manner. He always thought she laid it on a bit thick. ‘I don’t know what people will think. You’re scratching the seat.’

‘No, I’m not!’ he defended himself cheerfully. Why did she have to make a fuss
now
? ‘I’ve got my trainers on. See? The marks’ll come off.’

Over the dark, stained wood of the pew his footprints were clearly visible. He sat down and rubbed his bottom over them, wiping them away with the seat of his jeans.

Meanwhile all attempt to sing the hymn had been abandoned and the vicar had come down to enquire what was wrong. The buzz of conversation was loud, but Mark definitely heard someone say Mrs Thompson was on the floor under a pew.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you would kindly sit…’

The vicar’s words were drowned by a terrible, shrill wailing, worse than the banshees in that play the Sixth Form had put on. Then came a shriek from someone else which echoed through the parish church, and echoed again till the sound was coming from every side.

‘I’m going to find out what’s happening,’ Mum said firmly, pushing past him. ‘You two children stay here. D’you hear me, Mark?’

They had forgotten the big butterfly, but now there it was again, fluttering close to Mum’s hair. Then it flew straight into her face. She tried brushing it away – Mark saw her arm go up defensively – but it was joined by a second, also making deliberately for her eyes.

‘Mum!’

Mark climbed over the pews to get to her, knowing somehow he had to reach her before they blinded her. They were everywhere – three of them now… no,
FOUR
! It was as if they wanted to peck her eyes out, but
butterflies couldn’t do that, could they? Not like birds?

‘Mark!’
Her voice didn’t sound natural, but was more like a little girl’s. A little frightened girl.
‘MARK! HELP ME!’

Before he could get to her he saw one butterfly spit directly at her. The stuff came out in a stream, splashing across her face, and she was yelling with pain. He tried to wipe it away with her hankie, but it was in her eyes which were already bloodshot and bulging. Then another one spat at her, and some of it went on his face too.

Desperately he looked around, but the air was swarming with them. Somewhere he could hear Debs crying for him and he called out, but he couldn’t leave his mother now. He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it loosely around her head and face in an attempt to protect her from more attacks. Suddenly he heard a loud squeaking coming at him, like his bike wheel when it needed oiling, and a gob of spittle landed in his eyes.

Oh Jesus Christ, it hurt!

As if it was burning his eyeballs out!

He felt his knees give way… the impact of the hard pew against his skull as he fell… the softness of his mother’s body as he sprawled across her, her shrieks tearing at his heart…

A whole chorus of those squeaks was all around him, but Mark was in a grey half-world of his own already. Pain, burning into him like trickling acid, corroding his flesh…
Must not give way
: the moment of clarity came and went again. Something was crawling up his leg, gripping his skin with sharp needle-stabs. His face, too: he had a sudden, surreal vision of a cultivator blade cutting into the softness of his cheek.

Screaming, begging for the torturers to stop, he’d give them anything, pay any price…

What torturers? He realised it in a flash – hadn’t he seen it all on TV – those nature films – that great chain of
feeding and being food? It was one second of lucid thought only, then the waves came up inside his head, and his life dissolved into blackening mist.

‘… are in their generation wiser than…’

Before leaving St Botolph’s Ginny fetched her own safety gear, such as it was, out of the little Renault and transferred it into Jeff’s larger car. While he drove, she struggled into her rainproof blouson jacket which she’d chosen because she could zip it right up to her neck and it had tight elastic around her wrists. Over it she wore the beekeeper’s hat and mask from Bernie together with the Reverend Davidson’s goggles. Despite it all, she felt far from secure.

‘It’s the headgear we must do something about,’ Jeff commented critically as he swung the Range Rover too fast around a tight bend and narrowly missed ending up with his wheels in a ditch. ‘Have you noticed, they go for the head and neck when they can?’

She disagreed. ‘I think they attack any exposed skin, it doesn’t matter where on the body, so long as they can sense the blood underneath.’

‘Feel the pulse, d’you mean?’

‘Not necessarily. More like dowsing: water-divining.’

‘Let’s hope we don’t find out,’ he said tersely.

They were approaching the village. Already the church spire was visible above the trees. Ginny bit her lip, trying not to betray her nervousness as she wondered what they would find when they arrived. Perhaps they were behaving stupidly even to go anywhere near the place. Neither of them might get out alive.

Rounding the last bend, the sight of two ambulances and a couple of police cars at the roadside, their lights flashing, was reassuring. A policeman flagged them down and seemed to recognise Jeff.

‘I’ve three two-litre cans of pesticide in the boot –
back-packs with hand-sprays,’ he called out through the window. ‘And Miss Andrewes here also has experience of dealing with these caterpillars.’

‘Moths,’ the officer said. ‘Church is swarmin’ with ’em.’

‘No caterpillars then?’

‘Yes, them too. You’d better have a word with the Chief Inspector.’

They parked just ahead of the police cars and Jeff opened the boot. From a small cardboard carton he extracted a surgical mask which he handed to her.

‘Here, put this on under that net thing you’re wearing, to cover your nose and mouth,’ he instructed. ‘And always spray well away from yourself. This is more potent stuff than they were using yesterday.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because we want to kill them, not just frighten them off. Or didn’t I tell you? Yesterday when it was all over, we discovered one thing was missing – dead caterpillars. Oh, there were a few, but nowhere near the number we’d expected. Same with the moths, too. They may have crawled off to die somewhere else, but no one’s certain.’