'Specializing in communicable Asiatic diseases/ Bygraves nodded. 'I'm up here for the day, before reporting for duty in Brisbane. And while I don't want to frighten you, right now it looks like I'll have my work cut out!' He pushed Harvey's arm down by his side and asked: 'How long have you been up here?'
'Just a fortnight/ Harvey was on his feet now. Tm taking my summer break. So what the hell's wrong?'
But 'suddenly' Bygraves became aware of the people gathering to watch the show. And he leaned closer to Harvey, bending down to whisper in the smaller man's ear.
'What?' Harvey yelped.
'But haven't you heard the news, read the newspapers?' Bygraves looked astonished, and more than ever worried. 'You say you've been up here for two weeks? Then it's here. It has to be here! Have you seen any rats? Have you noticed any other people with these marks? Jesus, it could be in the water!'
'Plague?' The word burst loudly from Harvey's mouth. 'Hey, did you say plague? But how in hell can I have —?'
'Don't say it!' Bygraves cut him short, glancing anxiously at the concerned faces all around. 'Listen, we have a serum. It isn't that serious if you get it seen to early — but I do mean right now! All of the medical facilities in this area have been supplied with the antidote. Unfortunately I don't have any with me, and this isn't a registered medical centre. So I can't give you any shots that will help here in Xanadu, but—'
As he set off in a hurry, with Harvey in tow, back around the pool to his sunbed, a small, anxious crowd began to follow on behind. Harvey caught up, grabbed his arm and said:
'But?' His jaw was beginning to flap. 'But what?'
Bygraves picked up a briefcase, went to open it and 'accidentally' spilled some of its contents: pamphlets describing the symptoms of Asiatic Plague, a new strain of bubonic. They fluttered to the crazy-paved pool surround and were quickly picked up by the gathering crowd.
And looking hopeless, frustrated, Bygraves said, 'Look, I think we're probably too late to stop it spreading through this place, but you are already short on time.' Pulling on a pair of shorts over his swim trunks, he said. 'I have to get you out of this place now. And as for the rest of you people/ he glanced at the milling, gawping faces all around. 'This thing will work its way through this place like wildfire! So pass the message: you should all get out, go home, report to your hospitals, doctors, medical facilities — and you should do it now!' Then, to Harvey: 'My car's this way.'
'But my clothes…!' Harvey, whose clothes were in fact in their vehicle, started to protest.
'It's your clothes or your life!' said Bygraves, pushing a way through the crowd.
Ten minutes later they were out of there, and fifteen minutes after that the general exodus began. And Red Bygraves was right: the thing worked its way through Xanadu like wildfire…
By that time Ben Trask and David Chung were at the observation point. They were on hand to greet WO II Bygraves and Jimmy Harvey when they came tearing down the road from Xanadu in a cloud of dust and heat- shimmer, pulled into the lay-by and braked to a halt behind the other car.
'How did it go?' Trask was anxious; he sluiced sweat from his brow, glanced up and down the road. Up there the mountains, and down below the coastal plain reaching to the vastly curving horizon of the South Pacific. Normally it would be a beautiful, exhilarating view, but Trask had no time for that right now.
'Some people were piling into their cars even as we pulled out of the place,' Jimmy Harvey said, keeping well down and out of sight inside the car. The dust was still settling. 'I think we made a good job of it. Thank God for amateur dramatics, eh? Would you believe I once played Romeo?'
Trask looked down at him and couldn't help but smile. 'No, but I'd believe a munchkin!'
'Eh?' Harvey grimaced as he pulled a blob of purplish cosmetic putty from under his left arm.
' The Wizard of Oz,' Trask answered. 'Probably before your time. How about the place? How did it look?'
'Like a resort.'
'Nothing odd about it?'
'No.' The other shook his bald dome of a head. 'Unless you
consider all those well-heeled people and all that tanned flesh odd. But me? I felt like a right whitey from Blighty!'
Trask shook his head, chewed on his upper lip. 'Why is it I'm not happy?' he asked of no one in particular. 'Why is it so quiet? I don't know… but something doesn't feel right.' And to Jimmy: 'Time you got some clothes on, and wear a hat. We're out of here as soon as people start to exit the place, or we'll get snarled up in the traffic. That is, if people start to exit the place!'
The locator David Chung was at the side of the road. Lowering binoculars from his eyes, he called out, 'Ben, here they come! A whole stream of cars on the high zig-zag up there. Ten minutes and they'll be here.' He came at a run across the lay-by's gravel surface.
WO II Bygraves had changed his T-shirt, put on a baseball cap and sunglasses. He slid out of the driver's seat and Trask got in. Now Bygraves would take over as the commander of this sub-section, making its numbers up to four. And they'd be here until they were ordered on up to Xanadu. There were sufficient armaments in their vehicle to start World War III.
Trask spoke to Chung. 'What do you make of it?'
'He's up there, definitely,' said Chung. 'At this range I can't be mistaken. Mindsmog, and dense. But it's so steady — I mean, it registers like steady breathing, you know? — that at a guess I'd say he's asleep. Which at this time of day shouldn't come as a surprise. But Ben, hear me out: I think there's more smog than just his.'
Vampires!' said Trask, emphasizing the plural. 'Lieutenants? Thralls? How many?'
'Him, and maybe two others. I can't be sure. But they're weak, too weak to be lieutenants. Again I'm guessing, but I'd say they're raw recruits, thralls.'
Trask shook his head. 'It still feels wrong. Too easy. I have this feeling he knows about us, that this whole scenario is — I don't know — a lie?'
Chung shrugged, but not negligently. 'That's your department, boss. I can't help you.'
Trask gave himself a shake, tried to tell himself he was wrong. And anyway, there was nothing he could do about it now. Tonight was their window of opportunity, and it had been 'foreseen' by lan Goodly. So from now on it was all go, go, go.
'David,' Trask said. 'I won't be seeing you until I come in with Chopper One, after dark. Take care to stay tuned, old friend. And lead these people right to their target, right?'
'You've got it,' Chung answered, as the first car out of Xanadu sped in a cloud of dust past the lay-by and on down the often precipitous road.
'You'd better be on your way,' Chung nodded. 'Good luck, Ben.'
But then a strange thing. A car coming in the other direction, up the mountain road, pulled in sharply onto the lay-by's gravel surface and skidded to a halt.
The driver cursed out of his open window, said, 'Did you see that? If it wasn't for this lay-by I'd be over the fucking edge! I mean, God damn it to…!' He had been forced off the road by someone trying to overtake the lead cars in the exodus from Xanadu. 'What the fuck is going on up there?'
Trask stared hard out of his own vehicle's window at the speaker — at his angular, somehow spidery figure, that seemed crammed into the seat of his battered, blue-grey, Range Rover-styled vehicle — and for a moment knew a sensation of deja vu. The man wore an open-necked shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, and the way he crouched over the steering wheel like that, he had to be pretty tall.
Tall and spidery, and his vehicle was…
Trask stared harder, and the tall thin man stared back — but only for a moment. Then his eyes went wide and the back of his vehicle fishtailed as he slammed her in first, revved up, and slewed back out onto the road. And:
'Damn!' Trask shouted, getting out of his car as the dust of the other's departure drifted back to earth. 'Deja vu nothing! That car, and that man — they fit Liz Merrick's description of the watcher at the airport where we came in!'
Even as the suspect car had fishtailed out onto the road, so the SAS type with the guitar had yanked open the boot of the observation post's vehicle and hauled out an evil-looking piece of artillery. Quickly assuming a firing stance behind a stunted pine, he rested the rifle's long barrel on the gnarled stump of a branch. And sweeping the steeply snaking road, he made adjustments to the telescopic sights. Then:
