The Fog - James Herbert [91]
‘Nah, no chance! Every time there’s a possibility, he fucks it up. Every time!’ Evans smiled, his face looking evil in the torch-light. ‘Don’t know how he does it.’
‘What d’ you think this fog really was then, Ray?’ Buswell asked him, knowing Evans always had several theories on any topic.
‘Well, I tell you, Bernard, I don’t fuckin’ know. But I bet you one thing – it’s man-made. It’s got something to do with the pollution, I reckon. It’s like those rivers where they’ve found thousands of dead fish, all because the bleedin’ factories have dumped their rubbish into them. Well, this time somebody’s dumped somethin’ into the air, y’see, gas or chemicals, I dunno what, but it’s got out of ’and. Like one of those ’orror films.’
‘Get away.’
‘Nah, I mean it. Somethin’ got into the air and it was spreadin’. It ain’t really fog, y’know. It’s like, er, like vapour . . .’
As he embroidered on his new theory which was occurring to him while he spoke, the fog, unseen in the dark, curled its way along the tunnel towards them. Just inside its fringes walked the figure of a man. He held a loaded rifle thrust before him, as though it were bayoneted and he was advancing on a rioting crowd. He heard the voices that were coming from ahead and something stirred in his disturbed mind.
He saw the figures outlined in the glare of two torches. His own torch lay shattered between the railway lines far back inside the tunnel. He drew nearer to the two men and the words, ‘Where you been?’ meant nothing to him.
Slowly he raised the rifle and placed it against the forehead of one of the soldiers. Then he pulled the trigger.
The tunnel was filled with the roar from the gun and the scream of the other man. The brief flash lit the scene into a frozen moment that was impressed for seconds after it had vanished on the mind of the soldier who had screamed.
Buswell threw his torch at Corporal Wilcox, who still held the smoking rifle, his fixed gaze on the dead man who was slowly toppling backwards. Still screaming, Buswell ran from the tunnel, leaving his rifle leaning against the dark wall. In his panic he made the mistake of trying to climb the steep embankment just outside the tunnel’s entrance, his hands pulling out clumps of grass as he endeavoured to pull himself up, his feet slipping on the damp earth.
His flailing arms caught at a small bush and, miraculously, it held his weight, enabling him to scramble up several feet. He heard the sound of a bolt being shot, sharp and clear in the chill night air, and it drove him on to further exertion for he realized the gun was ready to be fired again.
By sheer brute strength and blind defiance of the laws of gravity he almost reached the top of the incline.
His second mistake was to look back.
He saw the still figure at the foot of the slope staring up at him, not moving, not even raising his rifle.
Buswell sobbed and made a desperate lunge upwards, stretching his arm in a vain effort to reach the top of the embankment, as though there was another arm ready to grip his and pull him to safety. His hand closed over grass which was instantly torn from the soft earth and his boots were dislodged from their precarious footholds. He began to slither down, his scrabbling hands finding no purchase to halt his descent, his body pressed flat against the damp grass.
Slowly, slowly he slid down until his feet touched the bottom and carried on at right angles to his body so that he was almost in a kneeling position. The Corporal stood over him and raised the butt of his rifle.
The fog flowed from the tunnel, wispy and hesitant at first, but soon thickly and swift. It swirled around the two soldiers and quickly enveloped them.
18
Holman opened his eyes, his brain taking a few seconds to begin functioning normally. He stared up at the ceiling and allowed his thoughts to gather and settle, then turned towards the figure lying in his bed next to him. In the grey light that filtered through the drawn curtains her face looked as it used to be, calm, and hardly touched by life, but he knew, in harsh daylight,