earth while he was still supported by the horse's neck. He clung to the horse, his riding boots scraping through the long grass, and his weight slowed the animal down even more. It came to a gradual halt, body twitching and eyes rolling, froth foaming from nostrils and mouth. Bettina's body gleamed with sweat as she tried to pull her neck free of the man.
'Steady, steady, girl,' Denison gasped, relieved to be still in one piece.
He let his legs take his full weight and continued to talk soothingly to the horse, stroking its head, calming it.
It proved difficult to settle Bettina, though, and from the way the animal favoured one leg, Denison realized it had injured an ankle. He rested his own head against Bettina's, telling her it was all right now, nothing could harm her, when a movement on a grassy slope not too far away caught his eye.
His face jerked away from the horse and he stared towards the hillock.
He rubbed a hand across his eyes in disbelief and stared even harder.
But the vision had gone.
'I'll be damned,' he said in a hushed breath.
There should have been no deer in this part of the forest they were kept in a special compound on the other side, near Theydon Bois, where they were safe, away from cars, away from people. They were precious creatures to the forest, especially now in the rutting season. The numbers had been reduced so drastically over the past fifty years, that special measures had been taken to protect them. It was odd enough to see a deer running loose nowadays, but this was even more strange. It had been thirty years since a white buck had been seen in Epping.
And the superstitions and folklore of the forest were entrenched deeply enough in Denison for him to feel uneasy. He knew the sudden appearance of a white deer was a bad omen.
TWO
The car began to reduce speed as it approached the entrance to the laboratories, the driver easing his foot from the accelerator and using his gears rather than brakes to slow the vehicle. Crisp fallen leaves had scattered across the road's surface and, as the car turned into the long winding driveway that led through the trees up to the huge red-brick building, they formed a patterned surface on the road.
It was a pleasant location for a company involved in the control and destruction of pests, Lucas Fender mused as he kept the Audi down to the authorized speed limit. Deep in the heart of Surrey, surrounded by ten acres of lawns, fields and woodland, it would have made an ideal home for retired generals, or perhaps a health farm. It was difficult to guess from the building's appearance that its main function was the investigation of new methods in rodent destruction. Ratkill, the company he worked for, was involved in other operations, the building itself containing various divisions which handled woodworm and dry rot elimination, damp proofing, insulation, wood preservation and hygiene, manufacturing its own products for these particular markets; but the business it was renowned for, and the business that was responsible for its incredible growth over the past few years, was the extermination of rats. The massacres perpetrated by rats in London four years before had made companies such as this a growth industry. Ratkill had become the biggest and most reputable.
At the time of the Outbreak, as it had become known, Fender was an entomologist researching for a company dealing mainly with wood preservation. He had produced various papers on insect life, which was good for prestige, and contributed material for an encyclopedia publisher, which was good for the pocket. His company had been based in Huddersfield at that time, so he had been fortunate to have missed the nightmarish invasion of London and the consequent evacuation. The rodents, a new breed of monster Black rats, had finally been gassed, rooted from their underground lairs by the use of ultrasonic machinery and, apart from a few more minor skirmishes with those that had somehow escaped the gas, the threat had appeared to be over. But it had proved difficult to convey that to the public at large, for the disease transmitted by rat-bite had meant death for hundreds. And the memory of those torn to pieces by the vermin was impossible to erase.
The government inquiry had laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the ministry involved and as the minister directly responsible had himself been killed by the rats, the outcry had been neatly directed towards his negligence. No chances would ever be taken again: all sewers, underground rail tunnels, cellars, storage units were inspected, fumigated, and those thought to be a high risk potential, demolished. It was a massive operation and cost the rate payers millions, but no one complained. The horror of it all had been too great.
Perversely, the greatest sigh of relief came when the first Brown rat was discovered. Always enemies to the Black and, until then, the dominant species, they had been ousted by the new breed of Rattus rattus, the Black rat, for these had become not only more powerful, but more cunning too. The return of the Brown rat was a good sign, for it meant the Black really had been vanquished. And, of course, these lesser creatures could be more easily dealt with.
The rodent companies had flourished, for it had become law that any signs of vermin had to be reported to the local council immediately, and they had the power to quarantine and investigate. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of the Environment worked hand-in-hand with the various control companies, but Ratkill had the biggest government contract, thanks to the determined efforts of Stephen Howard, a young researcher for Ratkill at the time of the Outbreak who had played a large part in the final defeat of the rats. He had made many friends in government circles at the time of the siege, impressing them with his drive and knowledge of the subject, and Fender suspected that his special contacts within the ministries had contributed more to his rise in the ranks of the Ratkill organization than his skills as a biologist and administrator.
Nevertheless, they were old friends from student days, Fender, at thirty-one, a year older than Howard. They had both studied zoology at university, but had lost close contact on leaving, going their separate ways and into different fields. A phone call now and again, a meeting once a year that was all their relationship had boiled down to. But soon after the Outbreak, when the city had been cleared of infestation and life had returned to normal, they had made contact and Howard invited Fender down to London. By then Howard was Ratkill's Director of Research and business was booming because of a large government contract, and other countries were also plying Ratkill with commissions, for the fear in England had spread worldwide. Howard needed good men, fast, and Fender had his own reasons for wanting to join the organization. Within five weeks he had become what was known as a 'troubleshooter' for Ratkill, a rodent investigator. The public term was 'rat-catcher'. A high salary came with the job, for it now had an element of danger to it, and it hadn't taken Fender long to absorb the techniques concerning the tracing and destruction of vermin.
He studied the animal itself, its life cycle, habits, preferences, and he learned of the various poisons used to eradicate them.
In the first year of his working for the company, only three groups of Black rats were discovered and these had been quickly and easily dealt with. No one was sure how they had resisted the ultrasonic sound waves that should have drawn them into the gas-filled enclosures, but it was assumed they had been trapped somewhere below ground at the time the beams were emitted. It was a relief to everyone that the rats' normal reproduction rate had been hindered, for the sound wave machine had inflicted a particularly heavy stress on the mother rats, causing their breasts to run dry, which resulted in the starvation of new-born rodents. The groups found were old
