The Fog - James Herbert [122]
The bend was casual, not sharp, and there was no need to go to its apex to see what lay beyond. The whole tunnel further ahead was filled with the glow, the strange incandescence peculiar to the mutated mycoplasma. He had found it! Now he knew why the instruments of the helicopter above had lost it: it had literally gone to ground, slunk into a hole beneath the ground almost as though it remembered the hole it had been buried in for so many years. Could it be possible? Had it actually sought shelter like an animal searching for a lair? No, it was too ridiculous. And yet he had found it lurking inside the cathedral, and they had lost it once before. Could it really have drifted accidentally into these enclosures, into these man-made shelters?
He stood gazing into its hypnotic shine for several minutes, leaning back against the tunnel’s wall, suddenly realizing he was actually resisting walking towards it, that it seemed to be pulling him forward, that a small part of his mind was urging him to envelop his body in the glow, but the fact that he had become conscious of its mesmeric influence made him back away. He felt certain his immunity would not hold if he were to enter the mycoplasma in its strongest form.
As soon as it was out of vision, the magnetic pull on his mind was broken and suddenly he wasn’t sure if it had been his imagination or not. He hurried back towards the car, his brain racing with new thoughts and, by the time he had reached the car, an idea had formed in his mind.
He jumped into the Anglia, switched on the engine and, without turning on its lights, he began to reverse it towards the entrance. Looking over his shoulder through the rear window, he saw a shadowy figure silhouetted in the cloudy entrance and, as he drew nearer, he saw it was the man he’d thrown from the car. In his arms he cradled the head of his dead wife.
21
Holman crouched in the dark interior of the shop away from the eyes of the groups of lunatics roaming the streets, but positioned so that he could see the overturned Devastation Vehicle lying in the middle of the road. The fog seemed much clearer now, although there were still thick pockets of it drifting through and the very air seemed to carry the yellow tinge to it. Holman had taken extreme care in driving back to the vehicle for everything depended on his reaching the radio; he needed help from the base if he were to carry out his plan. And certain materials.
He had driven slowly and every time he came across a menacing individual or mob, he had speeded up until he was a safe distance away from them. Twice he had to mount the pavement to avoid recklessly driven cars and once he’d deliberately run over a dog that was running amok attacking people, but that was the only time he’d allowed himself to interfere in the surrounding chaos and only because the dog had presented itself directly in the path of the car. If he had had to chase it, he wouldn’t have bothered. He had detached himself from the nightmare and had become a mere observer. He knew it was the self-protection of his own mind: he’d always had that ability (or perhaps misfortune) to allow its feelings to go cold, remote, whenever circumstances became intolerable. He could either bury himself in action or retreat into insensitive logic; it wasn’t callousness, for emotion always flooded through him after the event. It was a natural ability to survive.
He no longer felt any strong sympathy for the people out there; his feelings were more akin to fear. It was strange how madness, which, after all, was only an illness of the mind, was so repulsive to the ‘normal’. Was it due to fear? Even with Casey