And some little distance away:
As Jake and Liz passed a patch of blackened, tarry ground, and a slumped mound that still gave off the stench of roasting flesh:
'What?' Jake paused, and his face was very pale. 'What? Do you hear that, those screams? Jesus, what the hell is that?' He turned in a circle, looked all about, but no one was there.
For a moment Liz said nothing. She had heard nothing and couldn't imagine what he was talking about — or maybe she could but didn't want to. But it was plain to see that Jake was badly shaken. 'Screams?' she said. 'The hiss and sputter of sap, perhaps, boiling out of a scorched branch?'
'Well, maybe/ Jake shuddered. 'Maybe/
But he really didn't think so. What he knew he'd heard had sounded much more like the screaming soul of a sinner, roasting in his own private hell. Or perhaps someone shrieking his final denial from a. world beyond the flames, a world beyond life.
And the bubbling patch of scorched earth continued to give off steam and smoke…
CHAPTER FOUR Gadgets And Ghosts
The decontamination booths reminded Jake of those antique telephone kiosks so treasured by collectors. They weren't red and didn't have those small glass panes for windows, but they were much the same size and even smelled bad. Not of urine, no, but garlic; Jake couldn't make up his mind which was more nauseous.
Situated in the back of the rearmost articulated trailer section, and fitted with doors as small as the toilet doors on an airplane, there were three booths on each side. Inside each booth was a disposal unit for soiled clothing; discarded items were sucked away, irradiated and microwaved, spat from an exterior chute and burned. The procedure covered all clothing. Which meant you were left buck-naked in the waterproof and airtight booth, where the rest of the process was entirely automatic. And that was when you discovered why these claustrophobic little shower-units — for that's what they were — smelled so foul. At first it was just hot water, stinging like BB shot where it blasted down on you from overhead jets, but in a few seconds it was something else: a mixture of something chemical and antiseptic, and something vegetable and oily. The chemical saturated and then evaporated, but the oil stayed. And — damn it to hell! — you were supposed to rub it into your pores. But if there was one thing Jake especially hated, it was garlic!
There was an intercom system; you could talk to people in the ops section, or to other agents undergoing decontamination in the booths, whichever. Also, the uppermost sections of the booths were glass-panelled on the sides from the neck up, and from there down stainless steel. This last was simply a matter of common decency; there were female as well as male agents.
Jake had chosen a central booth and Liz had taken the one to his left. Switching on her booth intercom, she said, 'I see you picked the middle one. You could have taken the one on the end, so there'd at least be a booth between us!' Looking sexy as hell (for all that Jake could only see her face, her long slender neck and shoulders), she pulled an impish face at him through the glass.
But he only grinned — a rare occurrence in itself where Jake Cutter was concerned — and answered, 'Oh, really? And why didn't you choose one on the other side of the vehicle, so you wouldn't have to be near me at all?' Then on the spur of the moment he leaned forward, flattened his hawk nose to the glass panel, and made as if to look down inside her booth. There was no way; the glass was misted at the edges and it was all gleam, steam, and cream down there. 'Oblige me and stand on your toes, will you?' he grunted — and was so astonished at himself that he bit his tongue — and was equally amazed at Liz when, for a single instant of time, she actually seemed to consider doing it!
It was the look on her face: a not-quite innocence, a curiosity, a magnetism that worked both ways. She looked beautiful like that: hair plastered down, make-up all washed away, and her skin shiny with oil — yet still beautiful. Jake was drawn by it — and repulsed. There was something he'd vowed to himself, and he would stick by it to the end, until it was done. And anyway, Liz didn't stand on her toes but simply blushed. Or maybe that was as a result of the steam. In which case it would be hiding his colour, too… thank the Lord!
'Anyway, what are you doing here?' she said. And maybe it was his imagination, but her voice sounded just a little husky.
Must be the intercom. 'I mean, you've made it amply clear that you don't want to be with us. So why are you?'
Jake glanced at the intercom panel. Liz's button was the only one that was lit up. No one else was listening, so their conversation would be completely private. That was assuming he wanted to talk, of course. And suddenly he did. 'I didn't have any choice,' he said. 'I could be here or I could be locked up. Well, I've been in jail, and here is better. But after tonight, I can tell you it's not much better…' There he stopped short, reconsidered. Why bother? Why try to get close to anyone? He'd been close to someone before, and she'd paid for it. Once was enough.
'They… they jailed you for murder?' Liz said, and her face was very serious now. 'That's what I've heard, anyway.'
'I killed some people,' Jake nodded. 'And if I get half a chance there are still two more who I want to kill.' He admitted it oh so matter-of-factly, and for a moment his brown eyes were very nearly black; they were bleak, too, almost vacant in their intensity. Liz felt that Jake's eyes looked at something a thousand miles away, perhaps a scene from memory, his as yet undisclosed past. Or maybe it was just an effect of the misted glass.
But then he smiled, however wanly, and was animate again. 'So, there you go. That's me, Mr Bad Man. So what's your story, Liz? What's a nice girl like you doing in a freaky outfit like this?'
She felt cheated, because she knew he hadn't told it all. Not nearly. 'Tell me just one more thing,' she said, shivering because the spray was cooler now, and also because of the look she'd seen in his eyes. 'About you, or about those men you say you killed. Did they deserve it?'
He looked at her, then answered her with a question of his own. 'What about those creatures tonight: did they deserve it?'
'But they were vampires, monsters!'
He simply nodded, left it for her to figure out…
By which time the spray had become shampoo, and they knew it was nearly over, this part of it, anyway. As he soaped himself down Jake reminded her, 'I'm waiting.' Despite his doubts, his resolve, still his interest couldn't be denied.
'Hmm?' she said. Then: 'Oh! Why am I here? That's easy. I was doing some work for a psychic-research group. Looking back, I suspect it was an E-Branch recruiting ploy. They haven't said as much, not yet, but I gather they're pretty hush-hush until a person is well-established with them. Anyway, the job was easy, the money was good and I needed the work. My office was in central London; I interviewed people, allegedly for Mind Magazine, and if they responded positively to a certain set of questions, then I was supposed to work with them and carry out a series of tests.' She shrugged, and through the misted glass Jake saw her shoulders give a little twitch, the suggestive movement of her underarm flesh as the weight of her ample breasts settled.
'Anyway,' she went on, 'I used an old German Prismaton-70 in the tests, and—'
'A what?' Jake cut her off.
'It's a machine that chooses psi symbols at random.'
'Psi symbols?'
Liz sighed. 'Five designs: a star, a circle, a square, a plus sign, and wavy lines.'
'I'm with you now,' Jake said. 'The machine picks the symbol, and the test subject has to guess which one it is.'
'Except it's not supposed to be a guess,' Liz told him. 'I mean, they're supposed to concentrate and try to know what symbol it is! That's what ESP is all about.'
'Go on.'
'Well, at first I would get a few lucky guessers… they might come up with two or three correct symbols in a row and I would get all excited. But in the long run it never worked out to anything, and I'd be disappointed
