The Fog - James Herbert [3]
However, he could also be quite unscrupulous in achieving his aims and more than once had seriously infringed the law, causing alarm among the few superiors who knew about his activities. At the moment his project was to investigate land owned by the Ministry of Defence, used by them for military purposes and protected for them by the Official Secrets Act. Vast areas of land, much of it appropriated during the Napoleonic war and more recently, World War II, was used as a training ground for the army. Most of it was in the south because of invasion fears. Holman knew that much of it was going to waste, areas of great natural beauty, rich arable soil being allowed to spoil. At a time when good land and open spaces were becoming more and more scarce, valuable country could not be allowed to be misused. The Ministry of Defence was holding tightly on to over 750,000 acres for training or test purposes and his department was demanding at least 30,000 of those acres be handed back to the people. There was every reason for the Ministry of Defence to retain a good part of this private land, but suspicions were that only a fraction of it was necessary.
The Ministry had been approached, but a tight security net had been drawn over any enquiries. So Holman had been given the job of seeing just how much land was being used and if for valid purposes. The war between different government departments was ridiculous in his eyes, but he accepted it as a fact of life.
He had spent two rigorous days dodging patrols, taking photographs, gathering information about the enormous woodland area owned by the Ministry on Salisbury Plain. Had he been caught the consequences could have been quite severe, but he knew the risk involved and even enjoyed it. His employers knew this and played on the streak in his character that demanded risk, an element of danger, a gamble.
Now, as he rounded the bend, he saw a village ahead. One of the small, barely known villages that dotted the Plain, he decided. Maybe he could get some breakfast here.
He drew nearer and suddenly became aware of a strange vibration running through the car, then of a deep rumbling noise as the vehicle began to shake. By the time he reached the main street running through the village his vision was becoming too blurred for him to travel further. And what he could see, he found hard to comprehend.
A gigantic crack appeared directly ahead of him then grew longer and wider, reaching towards him in a jagged, fast-moving line. His shocked brain just had time to register two children and a woman, and beyond them a man with a bicycle, before the ground opened up and they disappeared into the black chasm it created. The shops on his left began to collapse into the widening hole. The noise was deafening as the earth was wrenched apart, climaxing in a sound like an explosive thunderclap. Through his horror he realized that the ground below his car was beginning to split. He opened the door but too late – the car lurched forward and began to fall. The door was forced shut and Holman was trapped inside.
For a moment the car was stuck, but as the hole widened, it slid forward again. Panic seized him. He cried out in terror. Down it plunged at an acute angle, the rough sides of the earth preventing it from freefalling. After what must have been only a few sickening seconds, the car became wedged again and he found himself pressed up against the steering wheel, staring down into a frightening black void. His body was frozen, his mind almost paralysed with the horror of what was happening Slowly, his brain began to function. He must be at the end of the opening, where the sides were narrowest. If it widened further, the car would plunge into the black depths below. He tried to look up towards ground level but couldn’t see through the