The Fog - James Herbert [117]
Mason’s face lay a foot away from his own and it was turned towards him, the eyes unseeing, the expression rigid. A thread of blood came from one corner of his mouth, an indication that some of his ribs had torn into his lungs. Whether it had been caused by the accident or the cruel kicks of the lunatic mob, Holman would never know; all he felt was despair and the urge to lie there on the ground until the crowd left him alone. But he knew they would not leave him alone until he too was dead. The heavy weight was suddenly released from his body as the black man stood up and a boot kicked Holman viciously over on to his back. He saw nothing but the greyness above him at first, the eddying, drifting clouds of fog, singed with yellow, filled with man-made impurities. A ring of grinning, evil-looking heads intruded upon the periphery of the soft grey picture as the crowd gathered round him, looking down at him as though he were an animal about to be slaughtered for the sheer fun of it. They reminded him of the faces of his school friends when, many, so many years ago, they had trapped a wasp in a jam-jar and had begun to fill the jar with water through a small hole in the top. The ring of expectant faces had smiled gleefully at the wasp’s struggles to get free as the water rose, frantically buzzing around the inside of the jar, its circuit becoming smaller and smaller, its tiny legs beating against the smooth glass in an effort to grip it, all to no avail. To Holman, the smiles had seemed to turn into sadistic leers as the water crept up, inch by inch, the space between the top of the water and the roof of the jar physically encapsulating the wasp’s remaining lifetime. The grinning lunatics reminded him of the incident, for their expressions were not unlike those of the schoolboys and the circumstances now were not dissimilar. But this time there would be no one to save his life as he had done for the wasp by stepping forward and knocking the jar from the ringleader’s hands so it shattered upon the ground, giving the insect its small existence back. He had paid for that action with a beating, but it had been worth it for the astonished, cheated looks on his companions’ faces alone.
One head came closer to his, bringing his fleeing mind back to the present, and he saw it was the black man’s. The bus driver’s hand shot forward and grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head up and forward, the large brown eyes looking into his own. Holman recognized the slightly glazed look of the madness, even though the eyes were filled with cruel amusement. He remembered the revolver.
Carefully, he reached for the shoulder holster beneath his coat, flicked the gun’s hammer free of its retaining loop, drew it out steadily, clicking off the safety catch as he did so, put the short barrel under the man’s chin, and pulled the trigger.
The driver’s head exploded, spattering the crowd with blood and brains, tiny bone fragments flying into the air acting as shrapnel. The force of the blast sent the body reeling back away from Holman, the grip on his hair tightening so some of it came away at the roots. He jumped to his feet, holding the gun forward, ready to use it again, but the mob was too stunned to attack him. They stood looking at the twitching body on the ground, their crazed minds unable to understand exactly what had happened.
Holman began slowly to back away, his eyes never leaving the faces of the crowd, waiting for the first sign of hostility towards him to resume. Several were wiping blood from their faces and looking at their hands in amazement. He saw one middle-aged woman, a woman who normally would have probably fainted at the sight of blood, lick the red stains from the fingers of one hand, then repeat the process with the other. Her glazed eyes looked around her at her companions, then at the bodies on the ground, then over