The Fog - James Herbert [135]
It was a long, long time before Holman had the courage to uncover his head from his blistered hands and look up. He saw that the ramp he had crouched in was littered with debris, much of it solid pieces of rock and metal that, if they had struck him, would have killed him instantly. He did not look down towards the tunnel for he had no desire to see the carnage to human bodies the explosion would have wreaked; instead, he slowly and painfully raised himself to his knees and cautiously, inch by inch, lifted his head so that he could see what lay beyond the wall.
The whole area before him seemed to be a gigantic ball of flame. He could no longer see the structures of the gas plant or any buildings at all for that matter; anything that had been left standing – if anything had been left standing – was completely obscured by the billowing fire. He couldn’t hear the rumble of new, smaller explosions, but he could see the sudden bursts of yellow flame among the deeper orange and red billowing fire. He ducked down again for his eyes were already becoming sore with the heat and he blinked rapidly to moisten them. After a minute had passed, he looked over the top again.
The fire seemed to stretch from the river for at least a quarter of a mile to his right, covering the whole of the plant and most of the smaller factories nearby. He turned his head and saw that even the buildings across the wide motorway had been completely gutted. The devastation was appalling: the gas holders had obviously been full, the steel containers raised to the limits of their height for the use of gas that day would obviously have been small, and the two explosions beneath them had cracked them both wide open, igniting the highly combustible gas they held, setting off a chain reaction among the surrounding refining tanks, spreading the destruction with rebounding swiftness.
A few hundred yards away he could see what must have been the broken shell of the Devastation Vehicle lying on its side, almost completely burnt out now. He sank back down, his head against the wall, and closed his aching eyes. What a terrible price to pay. His thoughts were no longer angry – not even at those who had first instigated the malignancy then set it free by their stupidity – nor were his thoughts filled with fear of the madness it had caused. He was drained of feelings of that extremity; all he felt now was a deep, wearying sadness. He knew the mutation was gone, destroyed by the intense heat, the enemy and the ally of mankind. Nothing could have withstood that destructive but purifying inferno, not even the man-inspired disease, the mutated mycoplasma that seemed somehow more than just a formation of malignant and parasitical cells. Had its deviousness been imagined? Had it really possessed the power to evade its would-be destroyers, or had its movements been controlled merely by the drifting air currents? Had its mesmerizing quality only been the imagination of man, part of the subconscious will for self-destruction every mind possesses, hidden deep down in the darkest recesses of the brain, but always ready to be brought to the surface? Had Ryker really gone mad, or had he seen it was the only sure way? Perhaps he had known the disease had already got a grip on his brain and was steadily duplicating itself, destroying his healthy brain cells one by one, gaining control of his mind. Perhaps he had known this and decided in his last rational thoughts to end it both for himself and the disease. Or perhaps his suicide had been a combination of the madness and the compulsive drawing power of the nucleus itself. There was no way of knowing the answers to any of these questions now and, at that moment, Holman had no wish to know. All he wanted was to rest.
A sudden rush of colder air stirred him from his apathy. His hand stretched to the top of the wall and he pulled himself up once again. The fire was rising, drawing itself together in a great mushroom