The group had come to a halt and were staring silently at the vehicle. They projected a sense of hopeless despair.
“Can’t we do anything at all for them?” Wilson asked Slocock.
“Yeah, we could shoot the poor bastards.”
Wilson didn’t take him seriously until he reached up and pulled down one of the folding gun-control units from the ceiling of the cabin.
“No!” cried Wilson, grabbing his arm. “Don’t! Let them live!”
“Why? They’re finished anyway. If they get through the dead zone they’ll die on Buxton’s barrier. Be doing them a favor to put them out of their misery right now.”
“And I say let them be!” cried Wilson, his voice rising to a shout.
Slocock shrugged and said, “Okay, don’t get excited.” He started the truck moving again. “Your trouble, mate, is that you’re too squeamish. But you won’t be for long.”
As Slocock drove past the group Wilson got a closer look at the blue mold covering their faces and hands. He avoided looking at their eyes.
They stood motionless as the truck went by. Not much more than two weeks ago, Wilson realized, these had been normal, healthy people. But now, thanks to one mistake made in a laboratory in distant London, their world had been turned upside down and destroyed almost overnight. And he too was doomed.
Later, as they got nearer to Worcester, Wilson began to notice streaks of color that were alien to a British summer landscape. Bright orange, purple, blue and red—they were not the color of flowers; the orange was brighter than marigolds and seemed to glow unhealthily, and the purple suggested something that was rotting rather than living.
Worse were the large patches of gray. On one occasion they passed an entire field of grayness. Whatever the crop was—either wheat or barley—it was covered with a thick coating of gray fuzz.
“Well, we’re in the land of the magic mushroom for sure now,” said Slocock and took another drink from his bottle.
The sight made Wilson aware that the fungus attacked other living things apart from people. Crops and livestock right across England were being destroyed, which meant there would be a tremendous food shortage in the months ahead. Those who survived the fungus would most probably die of starvation.
Ahead of them, where Worcester lay, they saw columns of smoke rising into the sky. “Looks as if someone’s torched the place,” said Slocock. Then, a short distance further along, he brought the truck to a halt and snatched up a pair of powerful binoculars.
“What is it?” asked Wilson. He could see some moving dots in the distance but couldn’t make them out.
“Army convoy. Four trucks. Two tanks in the lead. New ‘Challenger’ tanks. Must be planning to try and break through the barrier. And they have a good chance of succeeding with those babies. They carry Chobham armor.”
“Are you going to make contact with them? They might be able to give us information about conditions between here and London.”
“They’re just as likely to blow us to small pieces. I’m going to give them as wide a berth as possible.” Again he drove the Stalwart off the road and into a field. “This is going to slow us up but I don’t want to take chances at this stage of the game.”
As the vehicle bounced over the rough ground the intercom buzzed. Wilson pressed the switch and heard Kimberley ask worriedly what was happening.
“Nothing. Just a little detour. Go back to bed,” he answered.
“I just fell out of bed. It’s like being in a barrel going over Niagara Falls back here. I’m coming through.”
“Shit,” muttered Slocock.
Wilson helped her open the small, circular hatch and then assisted her through it. She came feet first and he supported her legs until she was all the way through. She landed on the seat between them with a thump. “Thanks,” she said. She smelled of sweat but it was a smell Wilson didn’t mind. And he saw she was looking much better. Still pale, but more like her old self.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for all three of us to be up front at once,” growled Slocock. “If the cabin gets holed or we break a window, we all get exposed.”
“And if that happened what good would it do having me sealed off in that tin can?” said Kimberley. “I’d be helpless.”
“But still pure and untouched, Doctor,” said Slocock, giving her a suggestive grin. “And there’d be a lot you could do. Like climb into one of the suits and bring the other two to us. They wouldn’t do us any good, of course, but at least we could keep our contamination away from you.”
Wilson tapped the thick glass of the narrow windshield with his knuckle and said worriedly, “I thought you said this was special armored glass, bullet-proof and all that.”
“It is. Doesn’t mean it’ll stop everything though.”
Kimberley was peering round at the passing scenery. “Where the hell are we?”
“According to the map this is Fernhill Heath. I’m cutting across it toward the M5,” said Slocock.
“We saw an army convoy coming toward us,” explained Wilson. “And the sergeant thought it would be a good idea to avoid them.”
Kimberley said, “Well, don’t look now, but isn’t that another bunch of soldiers right in front of us?”
“Shit, she’s right!” cried Slocock, slowing down.
Wilson looked and saw a line of armed men appearing out of a row of trees ahead of them. He hadn’t spotted them earlier because they were wearing camouflage. Several of them were waving as they approached.
Slocock stopped the truck and sat there drumming his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. “I don’t like this. There are over 30 of them and some are packing anti-tank weapons. They could take us out no trouble.”
“Why should they want to?” asked Wilson. “They’re army, and this is an army vehicle. They’re not to know we’re from outside.”
“Maybe,” said Slocock edgily.
The main body of men came to a stop some 50 feet from the Stalwart, but four of them kept coming.
As they came closer Wilson experienced a sudden frisson. What he had thought was camouflage paint on their uniforms, faces and hands was, in fact, fungus. They weren’t wearing any uniforms. Instead their bodies were coated in a tortoise-shell pattern of green, brown, black and yellow patches of mold.
“Good God,” said Kimberley softly.
The four men, waving as they came, were now less than 20 feet away. One of them was shouting something, but as the cabin was airtight they couldn’t make out what he was saying. When Slocock shook his head to show he didn’t understand the man then pantomimed that they should come out of the truck. He appeared to be grinning but the coloring on his face made it hard to tell.
Slocock muttered, “Balls to that,” and shook his head again.
The four men promptly dropped to the ground and aimed their weapons. At the same moment the row of men behind them started firing. There were several sharp pinging noises as bullets struck the Stalwart’s armor plating and, to Wilson’s horror, two white smears appeared on the windshield. He ducked down on his seat, expecting the glass to shatter at any second.
Slocock quickly pulled down one of the gun controls and pressed the red firing button. On the cabin roof the GEC minigun began to make a sound like a sewing machine.
Spurts of soil were kicked up around the four nearest men. Suddenly all four of them were writhing on the ground as the minigun hosed them with high velocity bullets.
“Get the other gun firing, quickly!” yelled Slocock.
Unwillingly, Wilson reached up and pulled down the control unit for the big 7.62mm machine gun. The unit was like a smaller version of a submarine periscope. It had two handles on either side. Rotating them up or down controlled the gun’s elevation and turning the whole unit made the turret swivel correspondingly. There was even an eyepiece linked to a sight on the gun by flexible fiber optics.
Wilson looked through the eyepiece and got a close-up view of part of the ragged line of men shooting at
