Crabs: The Human Sacrifice
Author: Guy N. Smith
Date: 1988-02-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: In 1975 an army of gigantic crabs, the result of an underwater nuclear experiment, attacked the Welsh coastline. The battle was bloody, many lives were lost until the crustacean invaders were defeated. Over the ensuing years they turned up in the oceans of the World with further terrible slaughter of humans. Finally, though, it was believed that these monsters from the deep had been eradicated. Only memories of their invasions of land remained with the older inhabitants, tales of their depredations on mankind were whispered but often ridiculed by the modern generations. Until a few of the surv
Publisher: New English Library

Crabs - The Human Sacrifice - Kindle Version 1.0

(c) Guy N Smith 1988 - 2012

Published by Black Hill Books, April 2012

ISBN : 978-1-907846-44-1

First Published by New English Library (NEL) February 1988.

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Contents

Title

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

The End

Prologue

‘It’s … it’s murder!’

The girl’s voice was a hoarse vibrating whisper in the eerie stillness of the deserted supermarket, her strikingly attractive face deathly white in the glow of the single dim light, her lithe body pressed back against a rack of shelves, taut and twisted as though she was trying to wriggle in amongst the jars and cans, hide herself.

‘Shut up.’ Her companion was a tall young man dressed in ragged jeans and a scuffed black jacket, his bushy unkempt beard accentuating his wild appearance. He glanced in her direction just once, enough to afford her a glimpse of his eyes, twin orbs that seemed to stand out and blaze with hatred and madness, sent another pang of fear like a knife thrust into her stomach. Oh God, Pete Merrick was mad, as crazy as they made ’em, a psychopath who would surely kill her if she stood up to him. Christine shuddered, was relieved when her companion turned back to his task. So coldly deliberate, that was the most frightening thing about him. If he had cursed and raved, gone berserk, then she could have run screaming, could have hoped that somebody would get to her before he did. But he would have overtaken her, silenced her for good, killed her as he had killed others. So she went along with him, it was safest, and hoped that something would turn up. Maybe the police would pick him up; no, he was too clever for that, a cunning hunting beast of prey who always had an escape route, an alibi if he needed one. He might get killed, have an accident, step off the pavement into the path of a hurtling lorry. She knew he wouldn’t, he wasn’t that kind. They said only the good died young and how bloody true that was.

She watched him in frightened fascination. The heavy door of the store’s cool room was partly open and in the gloom inside it was just possible to make out the white hanging corpses of plucked poultry. Turkeys, mostly; a few cockerels, some pheasants and guineafowl all ready for the Christmas rush over the next few days. They gave off a tangy meaty odour that nauseated her.

Pete Merrick had a syringe in his hand, a small bottle placed upright on the floor from which he refilled the stolen hypodermic every so often. So methodical, he might have been engaged upon some legitimate task, legal injections that maybe increased the weight of the birds or improved their flavour. No hint of furtiveness, the hand that injected as steady as that of a hospital anaesthetist. Just a little prick, that’s all you’ll feel and then you’ll go right off to sleep. Except that on this occasion you’ll writhe in pain, scream for death and it might take you up to an hour to die!

Oh Christ, it was bloody mass murder! Christine clapped a shaking hand to her mouth, began to bite her fingernails, a habit she had kicked when she was ten but now it was back with her again and no bloody wonder. You’re an accessory to murder, girl, as surely as if you were pumping strychnine into those plucked birds with your own hand. I’m not, I don’t want any part of it, I can’t stop him. But you can warn them, an anonymous phone call to the supermarket before they open in the morning. Or the Press. Your fresh poultry has all been injected with strychnine, the crazy guy who did it would have poisoned all the frozen ones as well if he could, only they were too hard to get the needle in. He’s the one who burgled the chemist’s shop in Norwich, that’s where the strychnine came from. Oh, for God’s sake don’t let anybody buy any of those birds.

But Christine knew only too well that she would not make that call. It would have been easy enough, she could have slipped out of the flat first thing in the morning whilst Pete still slept. Except that he would have known. Those eyes of his, you felt them boring into you, burning into your brain like a tumour scan, you couldn’t hide anything from them. Even now he might be aware that the thought had crossed her mind, would punish her for it later. I’m sorry, Pete, you know I wouldn’t grass on you, it was just my conscience troubling me. Don’t hurt me. Please.

‘Getting windy?’ A humourless laugh as he pressed the plunger, withdrew the needle, stuck it back in the bottle.

‘No.’ The lie was unconvincing. ‘Not really. You’ll warn them, get the birds taken off the shelves, just ruin their Christmas trade in poultry? Won’t you, Pete?’

‘Like fuck!’ He moved on to the next bird. ‘You know me better than that, Chrissie. I don’t warn and I don’t bluff. Not like that lot who claimed to have injected confectionery with rat poison, made the headlines, and then it turned out that they hadn’t after all. Our group hits ’em hard first, tells the papers afterwards. Another dozen and I reckon that’s it for tonight, girl!’

Christine thought she was going to throw up. Oh, what had she let herself in for, could a deep love for animals really have led to this? Being a vegan, protesting, joining demos were fair enough, but she had never set out to harm anybody. She had not realised, not even guessed, until that day of the hunt last November. She still had nightmares about it.

Merrick had asked (ordered) her to accompany him across the fields the night before. In almost pitch darkness he had found his way, amazed and scared her with his uncanny senses. It could just have been true that he had once been a member of the SAS, that those stories were not just wild boastings. A hunter, a killer.

The countryside had been flat except for one small hillock known locally as the Knoll. Unerringly Pete had found it that night, followed the narrow footpath that led up and over it. Two trees stood on the summit, twisted oaks that were beginning to give up their battle with the elements after a century of standing firm, one on either side of the path, their boles like giant leering features in the darkness. We know what you want us to do, Pete Merrick, and we’ll help you.

‘Hold this.’ He thrust a coil of thin wire into her hand, began to unravel the other end, was tall enough to reach the thick branch up above, wound the wire round it; he stretched it taut, found another branch on the opposite oak at approximately the same height. Stretched the wire until it was taut, twanged it just to make sure.

‘That’ll do.’ He began to retrace his steps, left her to follow in his wake, knew that she would do so. Oh yes, Pete Merrick knew that she would run at his heels like a playful bitch puppy wherever he went. He did not even glance back when she stumbled and fell, left her to pick herself up and dash after him. He demanded more than just obedience. And when you saw the expression in those pale blue eyes beneath the heavy brows you did as he ordered because you feared for your life, tried to tell yourself that you were lucky to be his girl. So wild and handsome. And crazy.

Even then Christine had not fully realised.

The demo in the village the next morning had been a noisy one. The police were there, had arrested two of the hunt saboteurs who were spraying aerosol paint on a Range-Rover. Banners and placards, the usual routine, shouting insults at the scarlet-clad huntsmen. Some of the group were armed with aniseed and garlic, determined to spoil any scent for the hounds, a futile procedure but they tried it at every meet.

But strangely Pete Merrick had kept in the background, had not even shouted abuse, and then he had slipped away before the hunt moved off. Christine had gone with him, puzzled, but after only knowing him for two months she had learned not to query his actions. At the best you got a scathing answer, at the worst a fist in your face. Her cheek was still bruised from the first time he had hit her. She had almost packed up and left then, run off and tried to make out on her own, but for some masochistic reason she needed Pete. She needed to be humbled and humiliated, it was all part of her strange make-up.

They had walked out to within half a mile of the Knoll, hidden themselves in a clump of prickly gorse. Pete produced his binoculars, the ones he told her he had stolen from the sports shop down south last year along with the .22 pistol which he kept in a rolled-up sweater under the bed.

It was a bright frosty morning, the kind that photographers prayed for to get those splendid colour pictures of hunt meets which they could sell to rural publications for front covers. Not the day to stand about doing nothing; Christine began to stamp her feet and her companion growled at her to be quiet. He was tense, edgy. Even then she did not realise the true implication of that length of wire which they had stretched across the footpath the previous night.

Eventually they heard the baying of the hounds. The pack was in full cry and in spite of such distractions as garlic and aniseed they had found a scent.

‘Here they come, the bastards.’ Pete focused his binoculars, picked up the fox several hundred yards in front of its pursuers, a reddish-brown animal in full flight, its magnificent brush flowing horizontally. ‘The fuckers ask for everything they’re going to get. That guy out in front is Major Watterson. And the fox is going to take them up over the Knoll just as I knew he would.’

Christine could make them out now, clasped her hands over her ears in an attempt to shut out the unholy din, the deafening cacophony of death. An icy trickle began to edge its way up her spine.

The hounds appeared to be gaining on the fox.

‘I hope to Christ they don’t catch him before the Knoll,’ Pete was gripping his binoculars, watching every move of the scene. ‘They won’t, though. The only time these fuckers ever kill a fox is when they run him to earth. Then they delight in digging him out, throwing him to the hounds so that he can be ripped apart whilst he’s still alive. But I somehow think that there’s going to be a different kind of kill today, Chrissie. Keep your eyes fixed on those oaks on the summit of the Knoll. Just watch!’

Reynard had made it to the small hillock, was going up the slope, disappeared from view over the rise. Then came the hounds, strung out now. Finally the huntsmen, Major Watterson still in the lead on his chestnut hunter. Up the incline, kicking the flanks of his mount.

‘Now!’ Pete Merrick cried and even at that distance Christine saw what happened, so stark and horrible in the clear sunny atmosphere.

Christine went through the motions of screaming but never made it, wanted to look away but could not. Matchstick figures in the distance but every detail was unmistakable, a kind of slow-motion playback on a cinemascope screen, vivid clarity and such reality.

The Major’s horse had made it to the top, was disappearing over the brow totally unaware that it now had no rider. The Hunt Master himself was airborne, floating, an erect figure that appeared to be disintegrating, the head parting from the body, a macabre string puppet that had somehow become disjointed. A gush of scarlet fluid, a claret fountain that matched perfectly the riding jacket; now doing a backward somersault, cavorting, grasping hands attempting to locate the severed head. If they caught it they might fix it back in place and all would be well. Stretched fingers touched the spinning head but could not find a hold. A crazy cartwheel, no sign of the mount now.

The fox and hounds were out of sight behind the hillock, just a bunch of frightened huntsmen at the bottom of the incline trying to control their plunging horses. Christine heard their shouts, their screams, as the decapitated body hit the ground, began to roll downwards, the bumping corpse still jetting blood and apparently intent on retrieving its head. Catch it and stick it back on and everything will be all right.

It hit the ground, exploded in a spray of blood. The headless corpse rolled another few yards, was lost behind some undergrowth.

‘Pete!’ Christine’s voice was scarcely audible. ‘He rode into … into the …’

‘Yes, into the bloody wire we stretched across the path last night for that very purpose.’ Merrick laughed heartily. ‘One of the tricks I learned in the SAS. And we had one hundred per cent success. Now, let’s make ourselves scarce.’

She had followed him in a daze back to the motorbike and only during the breathtaking lung-freezing ride back to the flat at Sutton Bridge did the full implication of her involvement in recent events impinge on her brain. She was as guilty as Pete. If they sent him down for murder she would go down too. You’re a murderer, Chrissie, and there’s no getting away from that!

Which was one of the reasons why she had not run out on her boyfriend back in the autumn. And now it was too late. For Pete Merrick held a kind of animal magnetism, a mixed up love–hate relationship. He did things to her, a lot of things, that hurt and she enjoyed them. Bondage and corporal punishment had been no more than a masturbation fantasy until she had met him. Now it was painfully real. They also shared a love of animals although she had never known Pete show physical affection for a creature, scarcely gave a stray dog or cat a second glance. He was more concerned with waging his own private vendetta against those who hunted for sport, experimented on animals; a kind of abstract obsession almost, always against the so-called upper classes. She wondered if animals were just an excuse, a reason to … kill.

But this latest show of hatred was going too far. OK, millions of people ate poultry at Christmas, you would never change that. You couldn’t kill indiscriminately because of it. Whole families, children too, might die.

‘That’s it,’ Pete straightened up, dropped the syringe and empty strychnine bottle back into his haversack. ‘All but two of ’em dosed. I feel really sorry for the turkeys and chickens but at least their deaths won’t have been in vain this Christmas.’

He was getting madder all the time, she decided. Mad enough to kill her if he had reason to. He was what was commonly termed the ‘strong silent type’. She knew little about his past although on more than one occasion he had referred to childhood life on Streatham Hill so she presumed that that was where he had been brought up. An orphan perhaps, he never spoke of his parents. What had brought him to north Lincolnshire she had no idea. Except that he had an inborn hatred of fishermen and the wildfowlers who reaped their harvest from the wild duck and geese which wintered on the Wash, and the shooting parties inland. He had two convictions for GBH and was currently working out a twelve-month suspended prison sentence.

There had been a small Animal Rights Group based in the Long Sutton area, a vociferous minority who mainly directed their efforts at disruption of hunt meets from October to February. Peter Merrick had usurped their leadership, had led them into violence. After the death of Major Watterson police enquiries and harassment had followed and many of the members had drifted away. Only a small hard core remained but it seemed lately as though Pete was determined that he and Chrissie would carry on the fight without the rest. Again he demonstrated his preference for hunting alone and the only member of the Group he seemed to have any time for was Alan Cryke, a local youth who had been in trouble with the police since his schooldays. But in the ‘big jobs’ like tonight he trusted only Christine.

They cruised across the suspension bridge at Sutton Bridge, the river beneath a wide oily channel glinting in the artificial light. A siren sounded, made Christine tense and clutch her companion tightly round the waist. A ship was coming upriver, they had beaten the bridge by a matter of minutes. Otherwise they would have had to wait in a queue of late-night traffic and they might have been noticed by somebody, recognised.

Bearing left by the Bridge Hotel, almost half a mile of the A17 before turning right, coasting in behind a block of garages, wheeling the bike the last hundred yards. Christine sighed with relief; there was nobody about, thank God.

The flat was little more than an enlarged dingy bedsitter, a bedroom, kitchen and living room leading off to a cramped bathroom and WC. Uncarpeted, undecorated for a decade, its only heating was a twin-bar electric fire that fizzed and spluttered when it was switched on.

‘A good night’s work.’ There was a rare note of smug satisfaction in Pete Merrick’s voice as he kicked the door shut behind him. ‘No, don’t switch on the light, baby, we’ve already been asleep in bed for three hours.’

‘We could have had callers.’ She snatched her hand away from the switch in habitual obedience to his staccato orders.

‘Most unlikely.’ His tone was sullen suddenly, he did not appreciate obstacles being thrust at him by anybody, least of all Christine. ‘And balls to them if we have because we were fast asleep in bed and didn’t hear them knocking. Teach ’em to call at a more sociable hour.’

‘I’m freezing.’ She looked towards the heater, glanced back at him seeking permission to switch it on.

‘I don’t have any fifty pences.’ He was a sinister silhouette framed in the window, hands on hips, arrogant. ‘And even if I did have I wouldn’t put one in the meter.’

‘We’d best get to bed then.’

‘There’s something we have to do first, sweetheart.’ His voice was low, a barely audible whisper, but it seemed to vibrate the whole room. Her stomach churned. It wasn’t just the cold, it was everything. Tonight, what they’d done and now what she was going to be forced to do. She stared at Pete, trembled with an inexplicable frightening yet compelling passion, saw every detail of his almost perfect physique, the way his muscles rippled in the light, a beast of the wild that had killed and would kill again. Strong and lithe, yet there was something lacking; a weirdness that had her wanting to run screaming from this room. But she stayed, not just because she was afraid to flee, realised the hopelessness of flight, but because she experienced an overriding obsession with the man who stood before her. She watched his every movement as he shed his clothing, began to don the heavy black leather belt, its brass studs glinting evilly like flashing demoniac eyes; the matching wristlets. And then the sword which he reached out of his baggage in the corner, a pseudojewelled weapon with a slightly curved two-foot blade. The sheer primordial ferocity of Merrick’s soul seemed to fuse with the steel, vibrated it. Christine was convinced she could hear the weapon humming and throbbing. Oh God, it was awful yet she would have obeyed his commands with or without it. ‘The Executioner’, he called it, and she knew it was no bluff, that it was a killing blade. Because she half-understood the man who towered above her, which was probably more than anybody else had ever done.

The karate black belt; Merrick was capable of killing with a sudden chop of the hand or a kick of those muscled legs. Or just breaking your limbs one after the other like dried kindling sticks. No man could match him in unarmed combat, they would end up dead. More than just powerful – invincible. A cult figure that transcended anything that had gone before. In a strange, fearful way she worshipped him, a god you feared and offered your very soul to.

With trembling fingers she began to unfasten her clothing. Take me, Pete, just this once as other men would. I’ll give you everything. But she knew it was hopeless, he would enslave and hurt her as he had done many times in the past. Her agonised writhings were what he craved, her frustration his supreme delight because he delighted in denying her that which her body cried out for. That was how it was to be now. As always.

Now she was naked, lying there, her eyes fixed on him. Waiting. What would it be his time? The sword blade against her flesh, sharp and threatening, or her limbs twisted until they threatened to snap? There was no way of knowing.

If he so much as suspected that she might phone a warning to the Press he would kill her. Just like that. A single blow with The Executioner, beheading her or disembowelling her. Or maybe slitting her throat and watching the blood spurt until she was gone. She tried to speak, to reassure him, but no words came. The light seemed to dim, there was a scarlet haze before her eyes and she could only make out Pete Merrick’s silhouette. A killer watching his prey, fondling his killing weapon lovingly; as though debating within his crazed and twisted mind whether or not to kill. And all the time she was wondering what her fate was to be. Death, or just another game? Anything would have been preferable to this sadistic suspense.

Half an hour later she was still waiting. The room had darkened still further and she was convinced that Pete had crept out and deserted her, maybe for good, left her to face the rap. Charged with the wilful murder of twenty persons, a terrorist bomber in the dock. Only it was strychnine poisoning, worse in fact.

But he was still there, she could make out his powerful silent form. His eyes seemed to glow in the semi-darkness, bored into her like twin augers.

‘Cold baby?’

‘Freezing.’ But I’m not complaining because that’s what you’d like. ‘I’m OK though.’ It was just a game after all, a crazy sinister one.

‘You maybe won’t feel so good by morning.’ An unemotional statement, he didn’t even laugh. ‘But one thing’s for certain, you’ll feel a sight better than those turkey eating fuckers will on Christmas day.’

She winced. This was mental torture, he knew how she felt. She closed her eyes again.

‘Next Christmas half the population will be eating nut roasts with all the trimmings.’ He spoke with passion, sincerity. ‘What’s a few human lives against millions of turkeys?’

‘I guess you’re right, Pete.’ Even though I know you’re bloody wrong and crazy. Oh Christ, do something to me. Whip me, rape me, anything to warm me up, to take my mind off it all.

‘It’s going to be a long cold night for both of us.’ He leaned back against the window frame and his body, with the exception of his erection, seemed to relax, a coiled spring easing slightly.

Christine closed her eyes again, tried to force her mind to go blank in case he read her thoughts again.

Realisation of why he was doing this to her, her heart flipping, missing a beat and speeding up again. Nobody’s going to phone a warning to the Press, baby. Both of us are staying right here until it’s too late.

1

Wally Orme had been wildfowling on the Wash for the past ten years, ever since he was sixteen, and most of his forays on to the treacherous saltings had been in the company of a local guide. But he had learned his lessons well and had become proficient at his sport, had become an expert in the habits of the wild geese that wintered here every year, and got to know the tides, how they could creep up the deep creeks behind you and cut off your escape back to the sea wall.

Fair-haired and stocky he told his mates in the pub at Long Sutton that the only birds he was bothered about were feathered ones. Okay, they could laugh, but look what had happened to Frankie Edwards since he had got married; his trusty old fowling piece was gathering dust on top of the wardrobe because his missus liked to go into King’s Lynn shopping every Saturday and she didn’t like her husband going out anywhere on his own. For Frankie those moonlit nights out on the marshes were a thing of the past and Wally was going to make damned sure that that never happened to him.

Nevertheless things weren’t like they used to be. Every year your freedom was being curtailed. You needed a permit to shoot now, had to belong to one of the wildfowling clubs, and every weekend the visiting shooters lined the sea wall from Shep White’s down to Dawsmere Creek and blazed off at Pinks that were two or even three gunshots high. Bloody crazy! Nevertheless if you knew what you were about and had the nerve and knowhow to walk right out to where the saltings met the mudflats and get holed up in a creek before day broke, then you stood a chance of getting a shot at geese that were within range.

By mid-January Wally Orme had had eleven geese and that was good by any Wash fowler’s standards. Being unemployed helped because you had the time to spend on the marshes, and if you had no family ties and could afford the cost of a permit and a box of cartridges then life could be very pleasant indeed.

Wally was fast making a name for himself in the Sutton Bridge – Long Sutton area as a fowler who actually got geese. Visiting hunters offered him a fiver a time to take them out to the edge of the tide in the pre-dawn darkness but he resisted the temptation. He could have earned himself a hundred quid a week from the beginning of October until the season below high-water mark closed on 20 February but that was no good to him if he was going to have to kneel for hours in the freezing mud and let his companions have the best of the shooting. No bloody good at all, he would pick up his social security each Thursday and keep himself to himself, and if it stayed that way for the next twenty years then that was fine with him.

Today he had stopped out on the marsh by Shep White’s all day, had not returned after the morning goose flight was over. Some sandwiches and a flask of coffee in his old canvas haversack would keep him going until after the evening flight was over. There was a stiff offshore wind blowing and there would be duck on the move all day to and fro, rafts of wigeon moving from one patch of spartina grass to another, teal flying about in search of small flashes of water, and parties of mallard being pushed off by the incoming tide, returning as it ebbed. He was safe on the saltings. Sure the tide would fill the creeks between himself and the sea wall but it would go down by the time he was ready to return after dark. Sit it out and enjoy some good shooting in ideal conditions.

Wally could not help thinking about all that had happened in this part of the world these last few weeks. These loony libbers were really going over the top these days. Jesus, they had beheaded Major Watterson as surely and as deliberately as if they had dragged him to a French Revolution guillotine, the dirty bastards. And the police still had not charged anybody with the murder.

But that turkey episode in King’s Lynn was the most contemptible and frightening outrage of all. His mouth went dry just thinking about it. Thank God he’d had that right and left at Pinks a couple of days before Christmas Eve and had persuaded his parents that they did not need to buy a turkey. Not that they would have had one of the ‘townie’ ones, more likely a freshly killed bird from Fosdyke Farm. All the same, the thought of a slice of turkey on your plate was terrifying. Murdering bastards, eleven people dead including three children, all of them writhing in agony until the end.

There was a big police hunt going on for the culprits. The media reported that the hunt had switched to London where there had been a threat of birds being injected with warfarin but so far the law had drawn a blank. Well, the Orme family weren’t taking any risks; no commercial meat from now on, Wally would shoot hard until the end of the season and fill that big chest freezer up with duck and geese. It was damned ridiculous that curlew had been put on the protected list, they were plentiful and offered good eating. A sign of the times, everybody was anti-everything, whatever you did they would find something to protest about. Protesting was the disease of the eighties.

The day wore on. It was bitterly cold and the snow showers were heavier and more frequent. Wally ate his sandwiches and drank some of his coffee; the duck seemed to have stopped moving for the moment now that the tide was in and had pushed them off the sandbanks. In his big canvas haversack Wally had a couple of wigeon and a mallard; he had had a deplorable miss at a bunch of teal that had come low from behind and surprised him. Once the tide began to ebb maybe the birds would be back on the wing again. He settled down again to wait patiently.

He should have been enjoying every moment of his ordeal but for some reason he was uneasy. It was the recent horrors that had disturbed his peace of mind. Only a few days ago the local wildfowling club had received an anonymous letter. This bloody Animal Rights Group again, now they were switching their attention to wildfowlers. ‘STOP MASSACRING OUR WILDFOWL – DEATH TO THE GUNNERS.’

Bloody nutters, a few months ago the threat would have been dismissed with the contempt it deserved, but now the danger was a very real one. Look what the buggers had done to Major Watterson, and the killers were still free to strike again. The police were doing their best but the Wash marshes covered a tremendous area; you couldn’t expect the cops to sit out here on the frozen mud all day waiting for something to happen. The club secretary had suggested that the fowlers went out in threes for safety; Wally didn’t reckon much to that idea. The true wildfowler was a loner, always would be. He would carry on as he had always done.

The weight of his 12-bore magnum in his hands gave him comfort, a 3-inch chambered Bonehill, full choke both barrels. Just let the swines try anything with him and they would soon find out what they were up against!

The afternoon was merging into evening. He added another wigeon to his bag but the duck were not moving in numbers today like he had hoped. There wasn’t even any shooting coming from back on the sea wall, it gave him a sense of loneliness, something which he normally enjoyed but today found disconcerting.

Dusk. Some mallard began to flight but they were high. He knocked one down and searched for about twenty minutes before he found it. Not the best of days, very disappointing in fact, but at least he would not be returning home completely empty-handed. The light was going fast now and he could barely make out the ridged outline of the sea wall back towards Shep White’s. Time to be making tracks.

The going was easier than usual because the top surface was frozen, in places his waders crunched as though he was treading on scattered breakfast cereal. Only the mud in the creek bottoms was still sticky, sucking at Wally Orme’s boots as though trying to drag him down, rebelling at this invasion of nature’s last stronghold. Whimsically he reflected that somewhere out here King John’s treasure was supposed to be buried. People had been searching for it for centuries. Good luck to ’em but the Wash would keep its secret for ever, he was sure of that.

A distant clamouring, becoming louder by the second. Wally tensed, felt his pulses beginning to race. Pink-feet geese, so splendid, so musical, a wild chorus that filled the skies. He stood there just listening. Almost deafening now, directly overhead but was too dark to see the huge skein as they headed back out to roost on the mudflats. So wily, they had learned to beat the waiting wildfowlers by staying inland on their feeding grounds until it was almost dark and then crossing the marshes in safety. A worthy quarry, he saluted them. Maybe one in every hundred geese got shot during the course of a season and the bleedin’ antis even objected to that. Only when the goose sound had faded did he move on.

Almost at the sea wall. A reed bed snapped and rustled as he crossed it, ice cracking beneath his feet. There was going to be another very hard frost tonight.

There was somebody up on the sea wall. Wally squinted in the darkness, made out three outlines; visiting fowlers, probably, who were afraid to risk the saltmarshes. He would have to pass them. But he was not going to engage in conversation, just pass the time of day. The usual stupid predictable questions: ‘Any luck, mate? Where d’you reckon them geese will come out in the morning?’ Wally wasn’t going to give hard-earned information away to townies like that.

He could make out their silhouettes more clearly now, a tall one, a slim one that might have been a lad or a young woman and a much smaller one. He shouldered his gun, made ready to run the gauntlet of questions.

‘Any luck, mate?’

Wally paused. At this distance he could see that the three of them were all wearing balaclava helmets, dark coloured garments that just showed their eyes. He felt a trifle uneasy; no reason to, a lot of fowlers on the Wash wore what they termed ‘ballyharveys’. Only lately this garment had taken on a more sinister meaning. But that was the fault of extremists and terrorists. In this weather it was only sensible to wear something of that nature.

These three weren’t wildfowlers. There was no sign of a shotgun between them and the one was definitely a female. Birdwatchers then, obsessional conservationists who could not come to terms with the fact that wildfowlers also had the interests of their quarry at heart.

‘Well?’ There was something arrogant about the big fellow, virtually demanding to know if Wally had shot anything.

‘I got some ducks.’ Damn it, he didn’t have to tell them. He would have walked on past them if they had not been barring his way.

‘So you’ve been blasting poor defenceless birds out of the sky.’ The tall one had a trace of a cockney accent. ‘Firing spreading shot so you can’t miss and kidding yourself you’re doing something bloody clever.’

‘I am pursuing a legitimate sport,’ Wally retorted. ‘These birds were shot under the most sporting conditions. There’s a saying that wildfowling is cruel to the wildfowlers not the fowl, and if you’d sat out there where I’ve been since before dawn you just might agree with me.’

‘Balls.’ The spokesman took a step forward. ‘You’re a sadistic fucker, Wally Orme!’

‘How d’you know my name?’ Wally’s unease was turning to fear. Far out on the mudflats he caught the faint ‘pink’ of a roosting goose. He was all alone on Shep White’s outnumbered by three ‘antis’.

‘We know you all right, don’t we?’ A laugh and the other two nodded. ‘We’ve been watching you for some time now, Mister Orme. A lot of unpleasant things could happen to you if you carry on shooting birds. I think for a start we’ll confiscate that gun of yours.’

‘Keep back!’ Wally brought the barrels of his shotgun up, remembered that he had unloaded back at the big creek.

‘I said we’ll take that gun!’

The other moved fast, his left hand closing over the gun barrels, jerking them skyward. Wally grunted, held on, realised just how strong his assailant was.

‘Let go of my bloody gun!’

The other two moved in. Too late he tried to dodge the kick aimed at him, doubled up as a heavy hiking boot embedded itself in his groin. He felt the gun wrested from his grasp, his flailing arms being pulled down pinioned behind his back. Blows rained down on him, blinding lights flashed before his eyes and he tasted blood in his mouth.

‘Hold him.’ Pete Merrick grasped the groaning man by his collar, jerked his head up. ‘So this is the weedy little fucker who’s been killing all the birds on the marshes. One of ’em, anyway. Our first, there’ll be others!’

Wally could not see properly. Blood was streaming from his broken nose and some of his teeth were smashed. He spat, heard something tinkle on the frosty ground. ‘Give me my gun back.’ A plea, a whine, a lisp from lacerated lips.

‘Fucking guns!’ Pete grasped the magnum by the barrels, swung it up and brought it crashing down, stock foremost, on the iron-hard ground. Woodwork splintered, the steel action bent. He used his foot as a lever, wrenched barrels and stock apart, a thousand pounds’ worth of wreckage in each hand. ‘That’s one gun that’ll never murder again!’ He tossed the remnants over the sea wall.

Wally tried to shut out the sound but he couldn’t, best quality walnut and Damascus steel bouncing and slithering on sheet ice, rattling and rustling as they slewed to a halt in a frozen reed bed. His most prized possession, the same gun that his grandfather had used on these marshes before the war. Wally had treasured it, maintained and cleaned it. Now, within seconds, it was destroyed.

‘You bastards!’ He began to struggle. ‘I’ll see you in court for this.’

‘Like fucking Major Watterson didn’t! Merrick brought his fist up, a sharp uppercut that made a click like two snooker balls on impact, threw their captive’s head back. ‘Tip that bag out, you two.’

Christine and Alan Cryke obeyed, upended the haversack. Dead ducks thudded on to the ground, stiff corpses where rigor mortis had set in.

‘What we goin’ to do wiv ’im?’ Cryke jerked a thumb in the direction of their semi-conscious prisoner who would have fallen had not their leader been holding him upright, a whimpering pathetic figure who had given up all thoughts of retaliation.

‘He likes the marshes.’ Pete’s eyes blazed out of the slit in his balaclava. ‘So I reckon we’ll take him back out there. We’ll give him to the birds he claims to love so much, see what they’ll make of him at first light.’

Christine tensed. She recalled again with horror that moment when Major Watterson’s head had parted from his body, saw again those gruesome accounts in the more sensational dailies of the suffering of the strychnine victims. Murderer!

‘We … we aren’t going to … to leave him out there, are we?’ She gasped.

‘Well, we ain’t trekking all the way out there with the bastard to give him a bit of exercise.’ Merrick whirled, and for one moment Christine thought that he was going to hit her. Then he transferred his attention back to the injured man, began half-carrying, half-pulling him.

‘Well, well, the bugger’s still alive!’ Merrick laughed harshly as he stared down at their prisoner, rummaged in his pockets and drew out a length of frayed plastic binder twine. ‘Come on, you two, you’re not here just for the fresh air. Tie the bastard’s hands behind his back.’

Christine’s fingers were numb with cold, she left most of the tying to Alan Cryke. Wally Orme moaned, sagged, they had to hold him upright, supported him on his knees. His head fell forward, then raised up, tried to peer at his captors in the darkness.

‘Who the hell are you?’ He groaned feebly.

Pete Merrick drew something from beneath his jacket, a length of gold-plated steel that flashed in the faint starlight, the synthetic jewels on the hilt scintillating. The Executioner! Christine felt her knees go weak; this time it was going to be used, this was no game. With his free hand Pete Merrick flashed his torch on their prisoner’s face. A morass that was still bleeding, the front teeth gone, both lips gashed. The nose was twisted to one side, flattened, blobs of congealed blood clogging the nostrils. Wheezing, breathing with difficulty.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Orme glimpsed the sword in Merrick’s hand; the implication was not lost on the fowler. ‘No … you can’t … that’s murder!’

‘Execution, actually.’ Pete Merrick laughed mirthlessly, insanely. ‘The jury has found you guilty of murder, Orme. The murder of defenceless birds. The sentence is death. Beheading. The Samurai way, if you get me.’

Wally Orme almost slumped back into unconsciousness but mercilessly oblivion was denied him. Now his words were no more than inarticulate grunts of fear and pleading.

‘Kneel!’ Pete Merrick snapped, a whiplash tone that had Christine and Alan Cryke backing off. Orme swayed but somehow he did not topple over, head now bowed in dejection, absolute despair, rather than a condemned man positioning himself for decapitation.

Christine found herself forced to watch, her eyes fixed fearfully on the hunched kneeling form, seeing the figure of her lover to the side of their captive, the sword blade being raised to the extremity of Merrick’s arms. Poised. Waiting. Maybe conducting his own countdown in silence. The seconds ticked away.

No, please, I can’t stand any more killing. But she dared not voice her silent protests.

A sudden rush of air, a flash of gold in the dim starlight. A thud; flesh severed, bone disintegrating beneath the force. A cry of pain that was stifled and died away. The squelch of a body falling on the thick ooze of marshland mud. Lying there.

But Wally Orme still had his head affixed to his shoulders! Christine could see it plainly, the way it was twisted at an unnatural angle, staring with sightless eyes at her. Her gaze travelled down the fallen body and then she almost threw up. Orme’s legs were severed below the knee, bloody stumps still with rings of waders encircling them, pumping blood. And the dismembered limps lay neatly where they had knelt as though they were artificial legs that could be unscrewed at will.

Merrick was laughing cruelly to himself, savouring his handiwork as he cleaned the bloody blade of the Executioner off with a handful of spartina grass. His aim was unerring, it was only too clear to the watchers that he had not missed the neck of the bowed head. Instead he had gone for the legs, a last minute twist of his crazed mind.

‘He’ll die.’ The sword was out of sight now beneath his clothing. ‘Slowly. Maybe he’ll bleed to death. Or perhaps the tide will drown him. But more likely the crabs will find him first. They can smell blood a mile off, just like sharks.’

Pete Merrick was already leading the way back to the sea wall, striding on ahead of his companions, demonstrating once again his uncanny knack of being able to find his way with apparent ease across treacherous terrain in wan starlight. There was undisguised exuberance about the way he walked, the strut of a well-satisfied man.

2

The saltmarshes of the Wash in midsummer, a lazy peaceful plain of wildflowers and butterflies, buzzing insects amidst the marsh samphire, the distant sea a shimmering blue mirage that can only be reached by way of a maze of creek crossings. A place of tranquillity where winter is a forgotten nightmare, where maybe the corpse of a battered and bound wildfowler was merely local gossip, a tale invented for the specific purpose of dissuading the vandal from despoiling this place of beauty. Lonely but no longer sinister.

Louise smiled contentedly as she chewed on a stem of grass and surveyed the scene around her. Life was idyllic. Last Saturday she had become officially engaged to Brian, the fair-haired twenty-three-year old man who was at this moment threading a chain of marsh daisies for her. So intent, so studious, so loving. Delightfully childish at times.

The sea breeze wafted her long fair hair, a warm pleasant wind that smelled of seaweed and samphire. She turned her head, squinted in the bright sunlight, shielded her freckled face from its glare. They should have brought their bathing costumes but that was something you overlooked when visiting the Wash. Even on a hot summer day such as this the mud in the creeks was thick and treacly, the sea itself only tempting the most ardent swimmer. All the same the shirt and jeans were uncomfortable, you were overdressed.

‘There!’ Brian straightened up, came towards her, the flowery chain held at full stretch. ‘I am now going to crown you Queen of the Wash.’

Their pouted lips touched, teasing, laughing.

‘I’m sweltering.’ She drew a hand across her forehead. ‘Boiled like a beetroot. We should have brought our swimming costumes.’

He glanced sideways, looked behind him and said, ‘Well, there’s no law against bra and pants, is there?’

‘No-o-o.’ She pursed her lips, thought that she might be blushing, it could just have been the heat, ‘I suppose not. But …’

‘No “buts”.’ He drew back with the daisy chain, ‘Except that you don’t get crowned Queen of the Wash until you’re suitably unattired.’

‘Cheeky!’ She was surely blushing now.

‘I mean it.’ He wagged a finger in mock severity. ‘Bra and pants. We could both get a lovely tan in a couple of hours.’

‘I roast to a deep embarrassing red,’ she grinned, ‘It’ll cost you the best part of three quid for a tube of suntan lotion from the chemist’s when we get back to Sutton Bridge, but by then it’ll probably be too late and I’ll be blistering for days. But I’ll risk it if you will, Brian.’

‘OK.’ He began unbuttoning his shirt and as she followed suit she was aware of how her fingers trembled. She consoled herself that she wasn’t going to strip right off; Brian had seen her in her bikini last month when they had gone to Scarborough for the day and, if anything, that was more revealing than bra and panties. It was funny how her inhibitions troubled her, damned stupid. They had been making love for over two months now but always in Brian’s car, in the dark, still partly clad. But she took the plunge and peeled off her shirt, tugged at the waistband of her jeans; they weren’t going to do anything like that here. No way.

Brian had just his pants left on, a pair of scarlet trunks that could be taken for bathing briefs at a glance. Maybe he was a trifle overweight, not enough to matter, and his skin was too white. Sunbathing was a good idea.

‘I crown you Queen of the Wash.’ He leaned over her, lowered the yellow and white flowery ring over her head. It settled round her neck like a pendant chain and their lips met again, this time crushed together, and she parted her lips to admit his tongue.

They lay back on the soft grass, turned to face each other, embraced. Just a few yards away the white sluggish creek gurgled its approval.

Time passed, it didn’t matter out here. Only when the sun began to go down would they make a move and to hell with whether or not the chemist’s shop in Sutton Bridge was open or closed; if they burned then it would be a reminder of this ecstatic day.

Louise dozed in her contentment. The noise of that swirling creek was so soothing, a lazy passage of water and a faint click of shifting pebbles somewhere. And then, gradually, she became aware that her fiancé had an erection. She felt its stiffness through his briefs against her thigh.

‘Brian?’

‘Yes?’ He kissed her again.

‘You’re getting randy.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘We …’ She closed her eyes. ‘We can’t do it out here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Somebody might see us.’

He raised his head, exaggerated a scanning of the saltmarsh. ‘There’s not a soul in sight. And out here nobody could creep up on us, now could they. Not unless they crawled up this muddy creek and they’re not likely to go to that trouble just to play Peeping Tom, are they?’

‘We can do it later in the car, stop off on the way home like we usually do.’

‘All cramped and uncomfortable when we can have it in luxury here, the Queen of the Wash making love to the Prince of the Samphire.’

There was a roaring in Louise’s ears. The creek was bubbling as though aiding and abetting Brian in his seduction, and that clicking was much louder. She wondered what it was. Maybe it was seashells being washed along like miniature coracles. It didn’t really matter but perhaps she would satisfy her curiosity before they left.

Brian’s fingers were easing their way up her legs. Instinctively she pressed her thighs together. He began kissing her neck.

‘Don’t give me any love bites, Bri. Mum noticed that one the other week and she went spare.’

‘Stop playing hard-to-get then,’ he murmured and she eased her thighs apart, let him go where he wanted. She tautened as he began to stroke her through her rapidly dampening lower garment, wondered how long it would be before he eased a finger inside the elastic like he always did in the car. It was all a game of build-up, it had her pulse rate speeding up. She hoped they would still play around a bit like this after they were married.

With his free hand he grasped her fingers, pulled them down to where he wanted. A kind of ritual, I’m feeling you, Louise now you feel me. She thrilled to the touch of his throbbing arousement, rubbed it, and suddenly it found its own way out through the vent in his briefs, rested in the palm of her sweaty hand like a separate living entity that had suddenly joined them in a threesome. She rubbed and stroked it softly and in return he got his finger where he wanted it.

Of course he would have to take her pants off like he did in the car. It was just that out here it seemed so … outrageous. All the same she lifted herself up, let him roll them right down to her ankles, kicked them off and spread her legs a little wider than before.

He wanted her bra off too. No, Brian I’d be completely naked then. Except for the daisy chain, of course. But his hand forced its way beneath her body, got the clasp free.

‘God, I hope nobody comes.’ She stared up at the blue sky directly above, focused her attention on a tiny wisp of drifting white cloud that had no right to be there.

‘They won’t,’ he assured her and tossed his briefs somewhere in the direction of her own. ‘I guarantee it.’

Oh God, it was frightening being in the nude with your feller for the first time. No warning, she thought he might have planned it. She shut her eyes tightly, knew he was looking her over. He would see that large mole mid-way between her naval and the upper regions of her sparse pubic hair, see places that he had only explored with his fingers in the semi-darkness of a parked car before. All her secrets unveiled. She should have kept them for her wedding night but it was too late now.

‘I wonder what that clicking noise is,’ she said. ‘It’s coming from the creek.’

‘We’ll investigate later,’ he promised and came up on top of her, pushed gently all the way into her. ‘Never mind that now.’

Seconds later she didn’t care what he saw, or whether anybody else saw them. Her inhibitions had been swept away on the sea breeze and she had a sensation of floating, trying to catch up with that wisp of cloud which was now almost out of her line of vision. That clicking sound seemed to have speeded up in time with Brian’s thrusting. Oh Bri, I love you so much, I don’t ever want this to end.

But suddenly it all ended, just as her feelings had escalated to a point where she was on the verge of a mind-blowing orgasm. A vague awareness that her lover had withdrawn, they were no longer coupled, that he was kneeling bolt upright. Through her swirling mind she heard him say ‘Christ Almighty!’

It took Louise several seconds to adapt, to adjust to the mundane after the ecstatic, a slow awakening to the fact that Brian was no longer physically joined with her, that something behind them had appeared and distracted him. Her first thought was, ‘Christ, somebody’s seen us.’ She scrambled up, panicking, looking for her cast-off garments.

And that was when she saw the big crab!

Brian was staring at it in disbelief as it shambled up on to the grass out of the nearby creek, a sandy coloured creature fully the size of an adult Labrador dog. As it moved, it clicked.

Click-click-clickety-click.

Somewhere in the recesses of Louise’s mind something logically said, ‘So that was where the clicking was coming from.’ She froze, her brain unable to cope. Her boyfriend crouched beside her still fully aroused but his erection forgotten. Both of them just stared at the huge crustacean and thought, ‘It can’t be, it’s impossible!’

It was real and very much alive, its ridiculously tiny face a mask of miniature hatred and evil, pinpoint orbs glinting balefully in the dazzling sunlight as it saw them. But, abnormal as it was, there was something definitely wrong with it; its pouted mouth hung open and from it came twin strings of yellow pus-like saliva, old man’s phlegm swinging like pendulums, and within the shell the hideous body pulsed laboriously, struggled with life itself.

Louise wanted to scream. She also wanted to flee headlong back towards the sea wall and to blazes with anybody who saw her terrified streak. But it was as though her mind and body were both temporarily out of action, that she had been rendered an unwilling spectator to this macabre scene on a sunlit Lincolnshire coastline. She prayed that it was a hallucination, that it would go away, shamble back down into the muddy current and be lost for ever. And then they would forget and return to their love making.

Instead it moved a cumbersome foot nearer to them, hissed, and there was no mistaking its anger. Nor its pain. Mucus welled up out of the mouth, gave off a foul sour odour and that was when Brian found that he could move.

‘Run!’ He yelled.

Louise just stared at him. She heard him, understood him, wanted to obey, but for some inexplicable reason her limbs refused to move. A kind of petrification, a numbed helplessness, a total lack of co-ordination between brain and body.

‘For Christ’s sake, run!’

Click-click-click.

The crab shambled forward, seemed to gather speed after its brief jest, a clumsy sideways advance that took it past Brian, singling out the girl as its intended prey. Outstretched pincers like huge steel cutters poised, razor sharp.

And suddenly movement returned to Louise, a scream first, a piercing yell that vibrated the peaceful summer afternoon, cost her those precious seconds during which she might have escaped. Too late!

She turned to run, stumbled, and a vicious pincer closed over her left ankle, pulled her down. Now she was hysterical, trying to claw a handhold in the soft grass as the creature dragged her towards it, flaying wildly.

A brittle snap. Brian saw what happened in a moment of revulsion, and horror, saw her foot severed as easily as a pair of strong pliers might have snapped a length of thin taut wire. Blood sprayed, spattered the naked, writhing girl, showered her attacker. He looked about him for a weapon of some kind, a stone or a stick, but saltmarshes are peculiarly devoid of such objects; just spartina grass and marsh daisies, not so much as a piece of rotten flotsam in sight.

Helpless, naked he ran to Louise, grasped her outstretched arm. She had gone crazy, was fighting him, screaming, frothing at the mouth. He got a hold on a hand, pulled. Her body became taut, resisted him; the crab had secured her other leg in a firm razor-sharp grasp. A macabre nightmarish tug of war that lasted perhaps five seconds and then her leg was gone, amputated just below the knee.

But he had her, oh Jesus Christ he had her, and he still might save her. Somehow he lifted her up on to his shoulder, her fists pummelling his head, warm thick blood jetting all over him. He still might save her.

He broke into a staggering run, glanced up and saw the distant outline of the sea wall, a symmetrical raised hump that stretched across the landward extremity of the saltings, maybe a mile away. Sweat poured from him, stung his eyes, mixed with the blood that fountained over him. Louise had stopped struggling, maybe even at the peak of her terror and pain she realised that this was her only hope.

Click-click-click.

Jesus the thing was still coming. He dared not look back, surely even burdened as he was he could outdistance it. Crabs were slow movers, the bigger they were the slower they had to be, he tried to tell himself. Don’t panic or you’re done for.

Shit! There was no way he was going to be able to wade this wide muddy creek with Louise. He’d have to find a way round, follow its winding course until he found a shallow crossing place. An uneven gully that the tides had carved out by a process of erosion over the centuries, a twisting channel that wound back on itself. Too late Brian realised that he had cut-back on himself, lost ground, and the angry crab was only a couple of yards away, barring his path.

He pulled up, Louise hung limply across his shoulder, her blood gushing down his waist. She couldn’t last much longer even if the crab did not get them. He’d read somewhere how long it took an adult to bleed to death, he could not remember the exact time right now; it would take him quarter of an hour to reach the sea wall with no hindrance. A five-mile drive back to Sutton Bridge if there wasn’t a phone box nearer. An ambulance from … Spalding maybe, he didn’t know. Oh, happy Jesus, she didn’t stand a chance.

He stood at bay, stared the crab full in its repulsive face. The mouth pouted, gave a kind of cough and out came a thick blob of yellowish mucus, stringing and swinging. Its eyes seemed to glaze, cleared again; there was definitely something the matter with it. It was ill, in pain.

Brian glanced behind him. The creek was deep and muddy, they would surely drown; ahead of them this fearsome creature like a behemoth risen from the depths of the Wash and preying on human flesh. They had a choice … of death. Drown or be ripped asunder.

Any chance was worth a try. Brian braced himself, flexed his muscles, felt his calves bulging and hardening, a springboard of muscle that might just propel him over that monstrosity. He trembled, sweated. Louise had gone very limp; she might already be dead. The crab watched him with tiny unblinking eyes that missed nothing. Perhaps it guessed what he was about to do.

Then he leaped. Airborne but not high enough, his burden holding him down, knowing even as his feet left the soft grass that he had over-estimated his capabilities like that time in the school sports when he made a damned fool of himself and hit the crossbar in the high jump when he had cleared it easily in a practice session the day before. He had known the moment he jumped that he was not going to make it, just as he did now.

He sprawled headlong, grazed his shins on hard shell. He felt Louise go, roll on top of him, pin him to the ground. A shadow fell across them, and as he tried to raise himself up he came face to face with that horrendous crustacean.

Fear such as he had never known before, not even in his infantile feverish nightmares when loathsome creatures had pursued him in dark places, terror that rushed him to the brink of insanity’s black abyss. That revolting countenance, smeared with stinking mucus and fresh blood, eyed him as its powerful jaws bit deep, fangs sinking into Louise’s defenceless throat, crunching and tearing, blood spouting, warm and blinding, washing over him. It was in his mouth, he retched and spewed, watched as the beast masticated with a squelching sound, stuffing its tiny mouth, swallowing, lusting for more.

He had given up, he wanted to die. Oh, please God, why could it not have taken me first, spared me this? Louise’s head hung by bloody sinews, the crab was devouring her soft shapely breasts now, slurping on the tender flesh. Awkwardly using its claws as knives to disembowel her, pulling at the lengths of warm offal, delving into the gaping wounds.

Its eyes glazed over, cleared again. It spewed a mixture of mucus and blood, gulped and returned to its feast. Bones crunched as the frail skeleton began to disintegrate.

And then it turned to him. In vain he instinctively tried to defend himself, threw up an arm and had it amputated, watched as his own limb was eaten. He was screaming, cursing as a pincer located his other arm, took it off at the elbow. Oh Christ, the stink the bastard gave off, a nauseating cancerous stench that came from that dribbling pus.

He knew it was playing with him in the same way that a spider ripped off the wings of a fly trapped in its web; it rolled him over, severed one leg and then the other, made no attempt to eat them. Its hunger was satisfied, this was all a game, crustacean sport.

A bloody living trunk that could not even writhe in agony, crimson fluid spouting from four torn roots; the crab was a glistening scarlet attacker, its vile mouth stretched in what might have been an unholy grin. Its expression changed again, the minute orbs closing briefly in combination of fatigue and pain, its heavy body sinking down, still eyeing its victim balefully.

Suddenly it began to back off, an awkward shuffling, turning with difficulty, dragging itself back in the direction of the creek whence it had come. Clicking like a metronome that had lost its momentum. Not so much as a glance back as it tumbled over the edge, hit the deep muddy water with a loud splash.

And was gone.

Brian lay there and waited to die, tried to will the end. How long did it take a person to bleed to death? Louise’s head stared at him from a tuft of grass where it had come to rest in a bizarre upright position. Sinews trailed and spread from the neck like tentacles and caught up in them was that chain of marsh daisies miraculously still intact, a wreath of fresh flowers from her lover.

Her eyes were still open, fixed on him. I’ll watch you die, my darling. It’s all your fault, I told you somebody might come, didn’t I? The lips had slipped into a ghost of a smile, just a faint trickle of blood from the mouth staining the whiteness of her flesh. The breeze ruffled the fair hair, blew it across her gashed neck as though to hide the wounds.

I’m sorry, Louise, but at least I don’t have to live on after you’re gone. We might both just as easily have been mashed up in a head-on with an artic, the same difference. It happens to hundreds of young couples. Maybe there’s a life after, we’ll soon find out.

It was getting dark, the night sky streaked with the dying rays of the setting sun, black tinged with red. It took you a helluva time to bleed to death then, hours. A roaring in his ears, the tide must be flowing. It won’t be long now, my darling. At least the pain doesn’t last.

And in his nostrils he smelled that vile stench again, that cancerous odour. You know, Louise, I reckon that crab was dying too. Her head seemed to nod in agreement, and her lips moved but he could not hear what she said because the incoming sea pounding on the shoreline was deafening.

3

As related in Crabs on the Rampage:

Another drawing pin was pressed into the wall map in Professor Cliff Davenport’s office. The biologist sighed and hoped that the telephone would not ring again just yet. The door opened and Pat, his attractive wife whom he had met in those far-off days when the giant crabs first invaded the Welsh coast[i], entered carrying a mug of coffee.

‘You’ll have to try and get some rest before long.’ She set the mug down on a bench and noted the tiredness in his face. ‘You’re not doing yourself or anybody else any good by working round the clock.’

‘I’ll try to get some rest later this morning,’ he smiled at her. ‘But I kept my promise, I think you’ll agree.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you were home for the weekend, notwithstanding the fact that you’re going to work night and day from now on. Still, I suppose I must be grateful for small mercies.’

‘This is by far the worst and most serious crab outbreak since Shell Island.’ He pointed to the pin he had just thumbed into the map. ‘Two of the crabs had travelled up the River Nene right into the heart of Northamptonshire.

Almost into the centre of England; they couldn’t get further from the sea if they tried! They killed a party of moonlight river bathers and then fought to the death over the spoils. Both crabs were riddled with spreading cancerous growths! We know that somewhere in the River Severn there’s another bunch but the Severn is long and wide and deep and can hide them just as effectively as the oceans. Likewise the mudflats of the Wash are crawling with them and there are defences mounted on the River Ouse, the Nene and the Welland in an attempt to prevent any others infiltrating the eastern counties. They’ll die eventually but it’s all a question of where they’ll make their last attack. Which they’ll surely do. Pat …’ he hesitated, ‘I might have to go away again shortly. It all depends …’

‘I guessed as much.’ She turned away abruptly, and when she spoke again Cliff was alarmed to note that she was on the verge of hysteria. ‘Ever since we’ve been married our whole life has been dominated by these damned crabs! Well, I hope they die this time, every one of them, slowly and painfully. And then perhaps we’ll get some peace. Unless, of course, you find some other creature to pursue all over the globe!’

The door slammed. Cliff Davenport sighed and reached for his coffee. Pat’s nerves were stretched almost to breaking point. He didn’t relish leaving her alone again. And at that moment the telephone jangled.

‘Five dead crabs, Clifford.’ Grisedale didn’t waste time with introductions these days. ‘And this one beats the lot. In the River Leam at Leamington Spa!’

‘My God!’ Davenport’s gaze was already tracing a river route right from the Wash, one waterway merging into another. The Nene going upstream as far as Weedon Beck … Southam … the Leam! ‘It’s unbelievable but it’s happened. It’s as though the devils are trying to get as far from the sea as possible. Any sign of those in the Severn?’

‘Not yet but we’re keeping watch day and night.’

‘These crabs at Leamington, had they got the disease?’

‘Almost eaten away with it. Clifford, there’s a big lot been seen again just off Shell Island. They’re lurking somewhere in Cardigan Bay. A coastguard helicopter spotted them at low tide and then they scuttled back into the sea. After what happened last time on the Welsh Coast we’re going to employ all armaments there because we feel that’s where the big battle is going to take place.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’ Cliff was still staring at the map, trying to formulate some kind of pattern.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You know as well as I do, Grisedale, that these mutant crabs are capable of thinking. The raids aren’t just haphazard sorties against Mankind, they’re planned. Now just suppose those crabs in the Cardigan Bay had wanted to be seen. We know from previous encounters that they don’t show themselves just for the hell of it. Every time they’ve been seen they’ve been going to or from a destination. See what I’m getting at?

‘I’m beginning to; a deliberate ruse to throw us off the scent. Whilst we mass on the shores of the Cardigan Bay they strike elsewhere in force.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But I’m afraid the Ministry won’t see it that way. They don’t accept that the crabs are a thinking enemy. No way am I going to be able to persuade them otherwise. They’re going to set up defences around Barmouth and Shell Island and they’ll only withdraw them if something big happens somewhere else. I’m sorry, Clifford, I agree with you but that’s as far as it goes.’

‘I’ll be standing by,’ Davenport replied, ‘call me if you need me. Day or night.’

After he had replaced the receiver he stood there studying the positions of the various crab sightings on the map. It was getting like a kind of ‘Spot the Ball’ competition. You might stab a pin in anywhere and either strike the jackpot or else be miles off target; a miss was as good as several hundred miles in this case. There was no way of knowing, hazarding a guess was a waste of time.

But as surely as the moon would rise tonight, the crabs would be coming ashore somewhere before long. And it was the vast expanse of the Wash which worried Professor Clifford Davenport the most.

The small gunboat had been moored on the River Nene, about a quarter of a mile below Sutton Bridge, for the past fortnight. A grey, almost insignificant vessel, that blended in with the river traffic. A precaution. Two crabs had gone upriver, got as far as Leamington Spa. The Ministry of Defence weren’t chancing it happening again. Of course the easiest way would have been to stretch a steel mesh net across the river bottom but that would have disrupted commercial shipping and the wheels of industry had to be kept turning.

Red and white barriers had been erected along the banks of the wide tidal river to keep the crowds back, a police patrol car in the vicinity to ensure that the warning notices were observed. There was always a crowd; it varied from a handful to a packed throng, dwindling from time to time as nothing happened. The muddy tide ebbed and flowed, ships came and went.

Then one morning as the tide receded, left a narrow murky channel in the bottom of the sloping sticky banks, the lookout on the bridge of the gunboat saw the crab. It was settled a few yards above the waterline, its camouflage such that it might have been mistaken for a huge boulder, the size of a well-grown heifer.

The watchers beyond the safety barrier craned their necks; a ripple of awestruck conversation. They saw men scurrying on the deck of the warship, the police patrolman in the car was talking into his radio, the blue light on the roof began to flash. A couple of minutes later there came the wail of approaching sirens; two more police cars. Uniformed officers with loud hailers warned the crowds to keep back. It would have been futile ordering them to disperse, there wasn’t time.

‘The buggers are panicking.’ Pete Merrick focused his binoculars, got a close-up of the crab. ‘Jeez, it’s a big ’un!’

‘What … are they going to do?’ Christine saw a heavy gun swivelled round on the deck, lowered to bear on the bank.

‘They’re going to blast the poor fucker to hell,’ her companion hissed. ‘What else d’you expect? Witness the heroics of the Royal Navy, it’ll make the headlines of every paper. Our heroes at Sea. Christ Almighty, they make me bloody sick!’

‘According to reports the crabs have killed hundreds of people since they first showed up ten years ago.’

‘Of course they fucking have and can you blame ’em?’ His bearded face was flushed with anger. ‘The crabs have been persecuted right from the start. Man’s ignorance in the extreme, Chrissie. Crabs are meant to be small so they can be caught and eaten. These are big, they’ve no right to be that size so kill ’em. Don’t give ’em a chance, wipe ’em out, the world belongs to Man. It’s a kind of sport.’

She checked her reply, had long ago learned not to argue with her lover.

‘God, it’d make my day if that bleedin’ gun blew up and blasted those sailors to hell,’ he grunted.

The crowd had grown, more cars were arriving, people were pushing one another, lifting children up on to their shoulders in an attempt to give their offspring a view. Wait for it, this is going to be good, real good.

‘Take a look at the crab.’ Pete passed Christine his binoculars. ‘There’s something wrong with it. If you ask me the bugger’s dying just like they reported in the papers, some kind of disease that’s killing them off. But the authorities can’t wait for ’em to die in peace. Oh no, kill ’em while you can or else you’ll be deprived of sport.’

She could see that he spoke the truth. At a glance the crab might have been mistaken for a dead one except that its eyes flickered open from time to time. Its ghastly features were made even more horrific by some kind of growth that had spread down the one side, oozing a thick yellow pus. It appeared to cough and mucus slimed out of its mouth, hung in a string. Christine shuddered. It was dying all right.

Boom! The gun on the boat fired, its flat report rolling on up river. The watchers heard the shell strike home, something chipped and shattered. Somebody yelled, ‘They’ve hit it!’

Pete Merrick snatched his binoculars back, saw that the crab’s armour plating had been chipped just to the right of that awful countenance. A split, maybe a foot long but the missile had not penetrated. The crab did not move, just crouched there and even from this distance you could read the hatred in its expression. It knew it was going to die but there was no fear in those tiny orbs. Just hatred. And maybe subconsciously in some strange crustacean way it was asking to be put out of its misery.

Another shot, again on target.

‘E’s ’it ’im again look, the bloody shell’s splittin’ open!’

The crab’s shell was beginning to disintegrate. A wide crack had appeared, given it the appearance of a boiled egg hit hard with the blade of a knife, a jagged break that threatened to split it in half. And still the crustacean had not moved. Except its eyes, wide and glaring, the ultimate in defiance.

A third shot from the big gun and the crab’s shell fragmented, splintered. A grasp of horror went up from those on the far bank.

‘It’s awful.’ Christine thought she might be sick. ‘Look at that body underneath. Ugh!’

A shrimp of a creature even for its size, a pathetic body now that its armour was shattered, a sandy living entity sprouting weeping sores, bleeding, pulsating. Waiting for the end.

Some of the sailors had fetched rifles, were starting to take potshots at the helpless mutant from the depths of the ocean. Heavy slugs thudded into the flesh, tore open gaping wounds, blood began to pump.

The big crab, some pieces of shells still attached to it, sank down amidst its own wreckage. Bullets whined, splashed in the mud around it. Just target practice now. Blood sport.

‘See what I mean.’ Pete Merrick was white with fury, the hands that held the binoculars shaking. ‘Killing for the sake of killing. Just like these guys who slaughter the fowl on the marshes. Shoot something that can’t retaliate.’

The crowd was silent. Suddenly the crab was not the fearsome enemy of which they had read bloody accounts of carnage in the papers. It was a helpless creature being persecuted by Man, a victim of barbaric blood lust. Some were whistling in protest and that loud-voiced spokesman called out, ‘Leave ’im be, can’t you see the bugger’s ’ad it?’

A final shot that mulched the cancerous face and then the rifles fell silent. An awkward silence, you sensed the embarrassment of the sailors. All this to kill one crab and what the hell do we do now?

Press photographers were taking photographs, a policemen was trying to persuade the crowd to disperse. All they needed now was the incoming tide to remove the pulped carcass.

It had not been a good PR demonstration of the war being fought against the crabs.

‘You all saw what happened today.’ Pete Merrick was speaking from atop a large packing case in the deserted warehouse that bordered the River Nene, the meeting place of the Animal Rights Group. They met where they could, changed ‘headquarters’ with regularity.

A rabble, maybe two dozen people, lounged on broken pallets and empty boxes. Dropouts, drug addicts, those with a grievance against society in general needing a positive cause to follow. Something to demonstrate about. Teenagers mostly, from as far afield as Spalding and King’s Lynn who had heard of the new ‘messiah’ who would lead them. Stop the killing, to hell with law and order; peace to everybody.

Murmurs of disgust, some of the listeners spat on the dirt floor. Rumour had it that this guy had topped Major Watterson, was responsible for the death of Wally Orme. Good luck to him, death to the idle rich.

‘They murdered that poor creature.’ Pete’s voice carried conviction, passion, anger. ‘Just another form of bloodsport, no different from slaughtering foxes or birds. It wasn’t doing any harm, just sat there whilst they shot it to pieces. And that’s what’s been happening to the crabs along our coastlines. They don’t mean anybody any harm but when they come under fire can you blame ’em for retaliating? Of course you can’t. And you all saw today what’s happening to the crabs, witnessed the way they’re dying. And I’ll tell you something else, Man has done that to them. Oh sure, you won’t read it in the papers because it’s a closely guarded secret. Remember what they did to the rabbits, and can you have a more loving and harmless animal than our beautiful native bunny? They spread a cancerous disease amongst the rabbits to wipe ’em out because they dared to eat a few growing crops. And what harm do the crabs do? None except when they’re provoked but they live in the ocean and Man relies, or thinks he does, on huge catches of fish. Greed, money. And he’s afraid to fish the ocean in case he runs into the crabs. So kill the crabs off and then we’ll be able to kill the fish off! In the end there’ll be nothing left. Unless we do something about it.’

Whispered approval, a nodding of heads and then a voice from the back asked, ‘How?’

‘I’ll tell you how,’ Merrick stood up, drew himself up to his full height. ‘We’ve got to strike the fear of God into these folks. Look at how the hunting folk are running scared, how the wildfowlers go out in numbers during the winter in case we get one of ’em. That’s what we’ve got to do to stop the crabs being slaughtered. And I’ll bet none of you have ever given any thought to the crabs, why they’re so big, what they’re doing in the oceans. Well, let me tell you I’m not exactly a religious man …’

Silence, eager anticipation. Feet shuffled.

‘The crabs are more than just creatures.’ Pete Merrick’s voice was low, a vibrant whisper that carried and echoed in the old hangar ‘They’re … gods!’

‘Get away!’ A laugh somewhere.

‘All right, you can laugh and I don’t expect any of you to believe the Bible. I don’t, not the New Testament anyway. But the Old Testament is a history of what happened once, written down as folks saw it back in those times. Behemoth, for instance. Some mighty creature existed, make no mistake about that. I know because I’ve met occultists, been to their gatherings. There isn’t a God but there’s things a bloody sight more powerful that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. And that’s what these crabs are, no matter what the scientists and the papers try to get you to believe, and tell you all this crap about mutations caused by underwater nuclear experiments[ii] … by the Russians, naturally. When in doubt blame the Russians.’

‘You got a point, Pete.’ A youth sitting cross-legged at the front spoke in an expressionless voice.

‘Sure I have. And the crabs are angry at the way they’re being shot at on sight. They know where the cancer came from too. And … they gotta be appeased, revenged.’

‘How?’ Again.

‘Like I said, we showed the hunt and the fowlers, didn’t we, scared the shit out of ’em. Well we gotta do the same to those who kill crabs. The crabs are demanding human flesh and blood and we gotta give it to ’em. Let me put it to you in two simple words - human sacrifices!’

‘Jeeze!’

Christine felt a wave of dizziness sweep over her, thought for one moment that she might faint and then the feeling passed, left her trembling with fear. Her stomach seemed to have balled, she felt sick. Pete was blood crazy, going over the top. He was looking for an excuse to murder. And she knew that he meant every word he had said, you could tell by the expression in his eyes. For him the crabs were gods who demanded human meat and he would give it to them.

‘Does anybody here not agree?’ Does anybody here dare disagree?

Nobody spoke up. They had no reason to. Death to the hunters, the murderers of innocent creatures.

‘Right then, we all agree.’ Merrick was sweating heavily and there was a crazy triumphant gleam in his eyes. ‘We need a victim for sacrifice, not just a nobody that will make a half column on page five, somebody really big who’ll hit the headlines and only then will these fuckers begin to realise. That’s what the terrorists do, they don’t waste their time with small fry and neither will we.’

And Pete Merrick already had his first victim in mind.

4

Susan Delphore was eighteen, tall, beautiful and spoiled. Slim and leggy she wore the most fashionable clothes, had a variety of fur coats, a wardrobe full that went back to the days when she was at finishing school in Paris. Long blonde hair fell immaculately below her shoulders and her manicured fingernails prevented her from indulging in any kind of menial household chore. Not that she needed to because her parents’ luxurious Lincolnshire household boasted a housemaid as well as a cook. Sam, the chauffeur, was more of a handyman and general factotum because cars were the Delphores’ hobby and they liked to drive them themselves.

Morland Delphore had made his first million back in the early seventies. Just as cars were his personal indulgence (he had a pair of Silver Cloud Rolls Royces with blue upholstery), furs were his business. He imported the seal skins direct from the culling grounds, had more than once been the target for demonstrators. In 1981 his home had had a 24-hour police guard for a month. There had been a few skirmishes, one or two arrests. Alan Cryke was one of those who had been fined £25 for offences under the Public Order Act. After that the trouble had died down but Morland was permanently uneasy; his country residence, set amidst a grove of Scots pine and standing in its own grounds of fifteen acres, was always a possible target for the animal libbers. It was time the law brought back the birch, he told everybody. That and National Service. These layabouts would soon stop their antics. Boredom and a lack of discipline was the root of the trouble, violent demonstrations were just means of finding some way of passing the time. On Saturday afternoons the rabble went to football matches and found another means of letting off steam. An excuse, not a cause.

Sam Jackson, the chauffeur, had been delegated to keep a strict watch on the grounds and to patrol them before retiring for the night. All the same, Morland never really slept easily. A large fleshy man, he had a quick temper, was accustomed to getting his own way over most things. Like Susan. And Jeanette, his wife.

With hindsight, Morland reflected ruefully, marrying Jeanette had been the biggest single mistake of his life. Youthful impetuosity combined with an enforced marriage which had resulted in Susan being born six months to the day after their wedding. He often wondered how he had stuck Jeanette all these years. Bright chestnut hair (a warning to any man of a woman’s quick temper) her looks had deteriorated this last ten years due to her disagreeable nature. The lips had tightened into an expression of permanent discontent, pouches had formed beneath the pale blue eyes. Her slim legs and waistline had thickened; she still blamed childbirth for that, made no secret of the fact that she would have preferred to remain childless. And since Susan’s return from Paris she had seemed obsessed with taking it out on her daughter which, although it took the pressure off Morland somewhat, did not make for family harmony.

‘But at least it will all have been worth it if she marries well,’ Jeanette pronounced one evening at dinner.

‘Mother, whatever are you talking about? Susan glanced up in indignation; her mother’s habit of referring to her in the third person in her company was a constant source of irritation. More than once Susan had voiced her protest but it made no difference. Her mother did it deliberately to annoy her.

‘I mean marry somebody of means, of standing.’ A haughty reply. Morland groaned inwardly. Here we bloody go again!

‘That’s stupid mother and you know it. You marry somebody because you love them, regardless of who they are. I suppose you married dad for his money.’

‘He didn’t have any in those days.’

‘There you are then, you’ve destroyed your own argument.’

‘Things were different in our day.’ Jeanette pouted her lips, a sure sign that she was in one of her bad tempers. ‘We all had to start at the bottom in those days. Your father and I did and look where we’ve got, this house, the cars, the parties we throw. That’s why you’ve got to marry well.’

‘But I don’t need to. I’ve got money of my own.’

‘Provided by us. Like the Porsche you had for your birthday. Your father and I don’t want to see our hard-earned capital squandered by some layabout latching on to the Delphore Estate.’

‘I’m sure Susan will be sensible enough when the time comes.’ Morland sucked a spoonful of soup noisily, tried his peacemaking act. Cool it, for Christ’s sake you two.

‘I’ll marry who I please when I’m ready.’ Susan’s spoon dropped into her plate and she glared across at her mother. ‘Just understand that.’

‘Then your father and I just hope it won’t be that Knight boy.’

‘His name’s David, mother, and he’s exceptionally nice.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion. He only had a state education and I’d be interested to know why his army career was terminated.’

‘He left the army to start his own business.’

‘Which failed.’

‘Due to the economic recession. And he does have a BSc, mother.’

‘A fat lot of good it’s done him so far.’ Jeanette Delphore’s features were becoming flushed. ‘He doesn’t have either money or a job and I’m damned if he’s going to sponge off us. What I said last week still stands, you’re not to bring him home again. If you see him then it’s without our blessing.’

Susan stood up, scraped her chair back and toppled it over with a crash. ‘There are times when I hate you,’ she snapped, ‘and they’re getting more frequent!’

With that she rushed from the room, slammed the door behind her. They heard her footsteps in the hall, the banging of the front door; the Porsche’s engine starting up, the tyres spinning on loose gravel, shooting forward.

‘See what you’ve done.’ Morland Delphore’s expression was one of undisguised contempt for his wife. ‘A bloody big row out of nothing.’

‘It had to be said, Morland.’

‘You’ve said it all fifty times at least.’ He returned to his soup, shrugged his broad shoulders in annoyance. ‘No tact, no brains, that’s your trouble, Jeanette. You wanted her to break with this latest guy so you’ve driven her back to him at express speed. I wash my hands of the whole business. In future please don’t involve me in your pseudo-aristocratic fantasies.’

Susan had first met David three months previously at the Night Spot in town. ‘Tall, dark and handsome’ she described her new boyfriend to Elaine, her friend in London, on the phone the next day.

‘He just sends you weak at the knees, Elaine,’ she enthused in a low whisper just in case her mother was upstairs listening. ‘You really must meet him sometime.’

David was thirty-two (too old for her, according to Jeanette Delphore) and was all set for a commission in the army when he had decided to come out and start up a small gun shop. It had lasted a year; the competition from established firms in Norwich, King’s Lynn and Spalding had been too great. So he sold out, just about broke even, and was still sitting on his small nest egg awaiting another opportunity to grab his fancy. So far nothing had turned up and he was still waiting.

He wasn’t the settling-down kind, he had made that quite clear to Susan at the outset. Not just yet anyway, not until he had established himself in whatever he was going to do in life and that could be quite a while. He didn’t have any ties, not even a divorced wife who was making maintenance claims on him. Free, free as the wind that whistled across the saltmarshes of the Wash. But would she like to come back to his humble abode for a drink?

Susan had gone, followed his Fiesta back to Sutton Bridge, the Porsche complaining because it didn’t get out of third gear all the way. She trembled with excitement, waved aside his apologies for the condition of the two-roomed flat. It was heavenly, such a contrast to everything she was used to. Down-to-earth, no snobbery, no façades.

They chatted long into the night. David had been around; Hong Kong, the Rhine, a spell in Northern Ireland and then back to England. Educated, clever, but not mother’s cup of tea; only a ready-made millionaire would suit mother.

Two nights later Susan called by the flat again. Uninvited. She had hoped for the phone call from David for two days, had hung around the house within earshot of the phone the whole time, became highly-strung, snappy with her parents; went off her food. On the second evening she made a decision. She would just ‘happen to be passing by, thought she would call for a few minutes’. If he didn’t make the running she would.

‘Hi.’ He looked debonair even in a working shirt and jeans. ‘What a surprise, I was only thinking about you this afternoon.’

But you didn’t bloody phone, did you?

‘I just happened to be passing by. I’ve been to Spalding to the shops.’ That is unless you saw me drive by, turn round and come back down the road.

He was in the throes of repairing his stereo. It looked a big job; there certainly wouldn’t be any background music tonight. The meeting could have been awkward, strained. It wasn’t. He poured a couple of drinks, joined her on the sofa.

It was nearly an hour later before he kissed her but it was worth waiting for, a continuation of where he had left off two nights ago except that now his hand strayed onto her bosom, stroked her small breasts through her blouse. Oh, David, I want you to, you can do whatever you like to me. That’s why I’ve come tonight, a little rich girl desperate to be screwed.

The seduction was perfection, not that Susan had much to compare it with except that skiing holiday in Switzerland last Christmas with Elaine when they had both lost their virginity. Mother would go spare is she ever found out.

With David everything seemed so natural, one thing led to another. She couldn’t really remember them getting undressed, garments had just seemed to slip off en route. He was bronzed all over except for a patch of white across his loins. So masculine, so sexy. She was crying out for him but he made her wait; two hours before he went all the way. She seemed to be orgasming continually from then on, sobbing at one stage.

And her mother was waiting up for her when she got in, a red-headed, bad-tempered crone in a silk housecoat that showed too much of her figure, holding a shrieking inquisition from the top of the wide oak staircase. They had screamed abuse at each other, slammed the doors of their respective bedrooms, and continued the row over breakfast the following morning.

Susan had tried to play it low key, had invited David home a week later in the hope that his charm would win her mother over. It didn’t because he did not have the necessary monetary resources to back it up and neither had he been to a public school. The evening was strained, Susan wondered if she’d blown it, hated her mother then more than she had ever done before. The bitch, the cow!

But David had just passed it off, remarked that she had better try and get used to visiting an untidy commoner’s flat. And that was good enough for Susan.

Now, tonight, as she burned up the road down to Sutton Bridge in the Porsche she had convinced herself that she was leaving home. Just one return trip to fetch her things and she would move in with her boyfriend for good. Except that David had other ideas, conveyed in the most tactful way.

‘It’s all a storm in a teacup,’ he laughed and kissed her. ‘I’ve only met your mother the once but I can read her like a book. You just stick to your guns, carry on seeing me, and after a while she’ll accept it. Don’t burn your bridges.’

‘I want to,’ she said petulantly.

‘You could be cutting your own throat. Look, I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a bargain. Stick it out for a month, and if at the end of July she hasn’t come to tolerate me, not necessarily accept me, then you can move in with me.’

‘I hate her.’ Susan raised her foot, somehow checked herself from stamping it as she would probably have done at home. ‘I could kill her!’

‘I killed a man once.’ His grip tightened.

Her stomach suddenly griped, her legs went weak. ‘Oh!’

‘A terrorist. A sniper. He got one of our lads, then I got him.’

A different tone of ‘Oh’ this time, relief, admiration. Her abdominal muscles relaxed again.

‘Killing’s something you never ever get out of your system.’ David was turned to one side looking out of the window so she could not read his expression. ‘You either crave to kill again or it bugs your conscience for the rest of your life.’ She had not the courage to ask what it had done to him. She was glad his face was turned away from her.

‘It isn’t something to talk lightly about.’ He flicked his lighter and touched the end of his cigarette with the flame. ‘But to get back to your mother, you’re over-reacting a bit, making mountains out of molehills. Damn it, you two are always quarrelling anyway so what’s one more bust-up. Let’s have a drink. I’m sorry I can’t put any records on.’

The evening had been one big anticlimax. David made no move to seduce her and she wasn’t in the mood anyway. Just talking, aimlessly at times, avoiding issues. The navy had shelled a big crab on the banks of the Nene below Sutton Bridge the day before yesterday; David had been down to the river today. The barricades were still up, the gunboat was moored on the other side of the current but there had not been any more signs of crabs.

‘They reckon they’re dying anyway.’ He swilled his drink around his glass, took a gulp. ‘Best news I’ve heard. I’d just joined up when they first invaded the Welsh coast. I was sent to Barmouth, saw the big battle that destroyed half the promenade. I’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of my life, crabs as big as cows overturning tanks, cutting men in half at a single blow …’

‘Don’t … please …’

‘I’m sorry. I just hoped the devils had been wiped out. This cancer, or whatever it is, is the best thing that ever happened. Maybe there won’t be any more battles, they’ll just die off and that will be the end of it.’

Susan left David’s at half-past twelve. The night was warm and sticky, it needed a good thunderstorm to clear the atmosphere. She didn’t care whether it thundered or not, didn’t give a damn what happened. All she knew was that she was going back home; a climb down whichever way you looked at it. David was as bad as Dad with his try-it-a-bit-longer-and-see policies. Stalling, putting off tomorrow because, she had to face up to it, he didn’t want to live with her. Call round and I’ll shag you but let’s keep it on that level.

She gunned the engine angrily and the speedometer needle was flickering on 65 along the wide road that was the main street of Sutton Bridge. She didn’t even keep a wary eye out for police cars.

The Porsche slewed on a right-angled turn into a narrow country road. She braked automatically, dropped her speed. There had to be some place else she could go other than home. Checking on the petrol gauge; half-full. She thought about London. Elaine had a flat of her own, she wouldn’t stand for any parental nonsense. She would put her up. Perhaps tomorrow. And if mother was waiting up she would tell her what a bloody old cow she was.

Clutching at all sorts of straws. She might just be pregnant, it wasn’t likely but it wasn’t an impossibility. That would put the cat among the pigeons, she laughed aloud at the thought. David would have to take her in then and her mother would have to change her tune. Not that Susan wanted a baby but right now it would serve a useful purpose.

‘Christ!’

Two hundred yards from the turning into her parents’ long driveway she slammed her foot on the brake pedal, felt the tyres crunching and sliding on loose chippings, the Porsche slewing.

There was a body in the road, a sprawled figure prone in the centre of the narrow carriageway; steep grassy banks on either side, there was no way she could get by. For one awful moment she thought that her wheels were going to go over it, crush the head like an eggshell or burst the lower body, spew bloody guts all over the tarmac.

The car stopped. She didn’t think she had hit the human form, she would surely have felt a bump. But she could not be absolutely certain. Oh please God!

Sitting there in the stillness of a lonely summer night, the engine stalled, headlights cutting a path down the road in front of her almost to her own driveway whilst beneath the level of the bonnet, screened from her view, lay …

He might not be dead, just badly injured. The victim of a hit-and-run driver. Needing help. Your help. Or if he’s dead … you’ve never seen a corpse before. She screwed herself back into the bucket seat, felt physically sick.

You can’t just sit here all night. You’ll have to get out. No! Yes. A quick peep, just to make sure you haven’t actually hit him. Then run for home. Phone 999. The ambulance will do the rest, you don’t have to do a thing. The police will come too. She was sweating heavily, could smell her own BO. Miss Delphore you are charged with causing death by dangerous driving and having excess alcohol in your blood. Fined £500, banned from driving for three years. ‘Killing’s something you never get out of your system; for the rest of your life.’ Shut up, David, I hate you. This is all your fault, if you’d let me stay at your place this wouldn’t have happened.

But it has happened and you’ll have to go take a look and phone. Now.

The seatbelt fastener clicked, released her, and her shaking fingers depressed the door catch. Click again. Go on, get out there into the darkness.

She got out and the door swung softly shut behind her. She put a hand on the bonnet to steady herself, edged forward. He’s right down between the wheels, I must have gone over him!

She shrank back. The man was lying there in a patch of shadow below the headlights, a heap that might have been anything, an old potato sack blown off the fields. Except that she knew it was a body. I don’t want to look, I don’t have to. Stay there while I go and phone. I didn’t hit you, did I?

Susan Delphore almost screamed. The inert form lying at her feet was moving, slowly sitting up, a hand grasping the front bumper of the Porsche. No, please!

And then she saw his face full in the glare of the headlights, or to be more precise, she saw the dark woven balaclava helmet which covered his features except for a slit between which a pair of eyes looked up at her.

‘Oh, I … I didn’t hit you?’

‘Fucking close. Too fucking close, you crazy bitch!’

Amidst her shock she was aware of movements in the darkness behind her, stealthy footsteps that crunched gravel, moved with speed. She whirled, would have managed that scream this time but for the fact that a hand was clapped over her mouth, muffled her cry of fear to a terror-stricken gurgle. Her arms were seized, dragged behind her back.

The man who had been lying in the road was standing up now, dusting himself down.

‘Christ Alive!’ he muttered, ‘that’s the last time I do that trick for you or anybody else, Pete. The cow must’ve been doing seventy.’

‘Is it her?’ A female voice.

‘It’s her all right.’ A tall figure, also wearing woollen headgear stepped in front of Susan, grabbed her long hair and yanked her head back. ‘This is Susan Delphore, the upper-crust fledgling of Morland Delphore who’s made his filthy pile out of the seal culls. Well, this is one time the creatures of the ocean are going to get their own back. Gag her and tie her hands. We’ve got an awful lot of walking to do tonight.’

‘What about the car?’ The one who had lain in the road was staring at the Porsche and there was a fanatical gleam in the eyes behind the slitted balaclava. ‘Why don’t we set fire to it?’

‘Don’t be a prat.’ There was scathing contempt in the voice of the one who was obviously their leader. ‘The cops would be on our trail before we reached the edge of the saltings. Phil, you can drive. Take it about a mile down the road and on your left you’ll see a bit of a pull-in where the tinkers often camp. There’s a pile of scrap there, a couple of old car shells. Drive it as far in as you can and leave it. And make sure you’re wearing gloves.’

Susan almost choked as they stuffed her mouth full of some kind of material. Plastic string bit deeply into her tender wrists, was already beginning to restrict the circulation. Her captors dragged her along, hurrying. Eventually she lost all sense of direction.

After what seemed an eternity they were walking on soft squelchy grass. Away in the darkness somewhere a curlew was calling, a musical sound that embodied the ultimate in loneliness and sadness.

And Susan Delphore knew that they were on the marshes of the Wash, that wild place where the quicksands and the tides had claimed innumerable lives over the years.

And that was when she gave up hope.

5

Susan had lost all track of time, just knew that it was still night because it was dark. Stars twinkled faintly overhead, gave a very dim silvery light, just enough for her to discern shapes, silhouettes. Still walking, stumbling, being pulled along, her jeans saturated up to the knees. On the point of collapse.

Why, oh for God’s sake why are you doing this to me? Because I’m Morland Delphore’s daughter. These are the people who besieged the house once, that time when the police were called to rescue us. They’re going to hold me to ransom, that’s it. A sudden thought that they might not be going to kill her after all. Daddy will pay, I know he will.

But why bring me out to the marshes? Her hopes sank again, there was no hiding place out here.

‘Here we are.’

She could make out the dim outline of the edge of the saltings where they dropped abruptly to meet the mudflats. She could also see a glistening expanse of moving water, heard the gentle lapping of the North Sea. Her captors were clustered around her, she counted five of them. For all the difference it made there could have been five hundred or five thousand.

‘Stand back.’

The others shrank into the shadow as the tall man approached. Susan’s legs were so weak that the moment they let go of her she sank down on to the wet spartina grass, rolled over to her side. Something clicked, a small powerful spring, a silhouette against the starry sky; she recognised a knife in the other’s hand. Her senses reeled, a wave of faintness came at her, but it passed and cruelly left her conscious.

The man knelt down, grabbed her bound hands and she felt the blade sawing through her bonds. The string parted. His fingers delved into her mouth, pulled out the gag. She heaved, nearly vomited.

‘You can scream if you want to,’ he laughed. ‘All you’ll do is frighten the roosting gulls. There’s nobody out here except us to hear you.’

‘Why … why are you …’

‘Because you’re a stuck-up capitalist bitch for one reason. Secondly your old man deals in cruelty, buys and sells seal skins and you wear fur coats. Thirdly, we need you for something … special!’

‘What?’ A hollow whisper. I don’t want to know.

‘You’ll find out before long. Now, get your clothes off.’

‘No!’ Susan shrank back, instinctively drew her body up into a ball.

‘Get ’em off or something even more unpleasant will happen to you!’

She plucked at her clothing with numbed tingling fingers. Buttons popped as she clumsily began to bare her slender, shapely body.

‘Gather round.’ Pete Merrick grinned in the darkness at the others. ‘Miss Susan Delphore is about to do a striptease for us.’

The cool night air chilled her nakedness. The sudden beam of a small torch dazzled her, forced her to close her eyes, and she lay there in fear and embarrassment knowing that these devilish people were viewing her nudity with carnal lust. In shame and terror she pressed her thighs tightly together. Rough hands immediately prised them apart.

She shuddered; embarrassment, humiliation, fear. They were going to kill her but better than that …

‘See!’ Pete Merrick directed the tiny beam of light directly on to her lower regions. ‘An upper-class whore, ready for the taking.’

The group pushed forward, stared at her. A hand stretched out.

‘No!’ Their leader knew what they were thinking, silenced their thoughts, dispelled any hopes they might have had of rape and orgy. ‘She’s not for us, brothers. Her flesh is already promised to the gods of the oceans.’

Silence, intakes of breath. They were afraid of his craziness.

‘Stake her out!’

Susan heard the stiff rustle of a canvas bag, metallic clinking. Then her arms and legs were seized again, pulled apart, stretched as far as they would go. One of the gang was hammering something into the soft ground, sharp blows that rang out and echoed in the stillness of the marsh night. Then they were binding her again, tying her wrists and ankles to the pegs, so tightly this time that she cried out with pain.

‘Good.’ The tall man shone the torch in her face, dazzled her. ‘You’ll know now how a turkey feels when it’s trussed up. Only it has one advantage over you, it’s dead. You’ll live … until the crabs come for you!’

Her brain flipped, almost snapped with the instant realisation of what they were doing, why she had been brought out here. Her lips moved but her plea for mercy was mute, just a releasing of pent-up breath.

‘We’ll be leaving you now. You might have some time to wait in which case there are a lot of things you can be thinking about. Spare a thought for those seals which wouldn’t be killed if it wasn’t for the likes of you and your old man. Just think of ’em, battered and clubbed, lying there on the ice injured and bleeding, squealing and wanting to die!’ His voice has risen to a hysterical crescendo. ‘But you’re privileged. You’ll lie here on a warm night, unharmed … until they come for you!’

The torch clicked off and the darkness rolled back. Susan heard them moving off, their booted feet squelching on the soft ground. She did not even bother straining at her bonds, accepted that it would have been useless. A surge of panic, moaning softly, sobbing.

Up above her like a sliver of water melon she saw a quarter moon, its faint ethereal light sinister, forbidding. I don’t want to see, better the darkness. Let me die quickly. But I don’t want to die. Why, oh why have they done this to me? I haven’t hurt anybody or anything. I haven’t killed any seals, neither has Daddy. Lots of women wear sealskin coats, there’s no harm in that. But whether she was innocent or guilty there was no getting away from her fate. They’re sacrificing me to the crabs!

If she hadn’t had a row with her mother she would not be in this predicament. Damn her mother, she had caused trouble all her life, a self-made snob. Jeanette Delphore always had to try and go one better than everybody else. And there were a lot of family skeletons she was doing her best to keep firmly locked in the cupboard. Like the fact that her folks had kept a pub, she even denied it within the family, told a whopper about her father having been headmaster of an exclusive boys’ school.

Three years ago Jeanette had taken up painting, converted one of the upstairs bedrooms into her ‘studio’. In the beginning she had gone to art classes but that hadn’t lasted long. The tutor had told her, so she related with no small amount of pride, ‘I can see that we won’t be able to teach you anything because you know it all.’ She’d believed her, taken it literally, had given up classes because she felt she was above them. That was when the painting had begun in earnest, copies of old masterpieces which Jeanette was firmly convinced were on a par with, if not better than, the originals. Her own fantasy world was portrayed in oils, and then came the day when she sold her first picture – fifty pounds. The frame had cost her forty but she conveniently overlooked that, and went back to her easel with relish.

The gallery had turned her next picture down. Oh Christ, that was a day of disaster but mother being mother had turned it to her advantage in her own mind. They were jealous of her, the damned academy were afraid of her, determined to push her into obscurity. Even now she believed that the arts people conspired to obstruct her, a select clique rejecting outside talent.

Morland began spending more and more time away from home and who could blame him? Jeanette did not seem to notice his absences as her obsessions became channelled. Susan wondered if he had got another woman somewhere. The thought hurt; no, surely no, Daddy wouldn’t do anything like that.

Morland Delphore was as tough as they came. She was proud of her father. Nobody got the better of him over anything. Except Mother, and he seemed to have abandoned her, pushed her into the background. You’re a wealthy woman, Jeanette, go do your own thing. Paint, keep up with the Joneses but just leave me alone.

For years he had been the buffer between Susan and her mother but lately he seemed to have climbed back up on to the fence. If you two want to fight then go ahead but don’t involve me in it. Do what you like, Susan, marry who you like, it doesn’t bother me.

Oh God, Daddy would have sorted these nutters out single-handed. She wondered if he had missed her yet. Her mother surely would, she would have been waiting up for her. ‘Susan, what time do you call this? Christ, what was the time? There was no way of knowing, a slice of moon and a handful of stars didn’t tell you much.

They would rescue her, they had to. If not Daddy, then David. David had been a soldier, he had fought enemies, killed one of them. The thought thrilled her but her hopes faded. Nobody had any idea where she was. The panic came back, had her straining at her bonds until her wrists burned and she gave up. I’m going to die. No, you’re not. The tide will come in but it won’t be a high one and you’ll be safe on the grass. The creeks behind will fill, empty again, and after daylight one of those patrolling helicopters will be sure to spot you. There were helicopters to and fro all day long searching for … crabs …

But all the crabs were on the Welsh coast, they said so on the radio. Just a few sick ones here. They wouldn’t come ashore, they would lurk in the sea, die there. That one they had killed on the banks of the Nene had been unlucky, stranded by the tide.

It was damnably cold. She was shivering uncontrollably, her flesh chilled by the cool of a summer’s night. The moonlight was brighter now that her eyesight had adjusted to the gloom, and raising her head she gazed upon a silvery expanse of wild wetland, felt the sheer loneliness of it in another wave of despair. It was like being the last survivor on Earth.

Curlews were calling mournfully out on the mud as though they commiserated with her. We’d like to help but we can’t. The tide was lapping nearby, burbling in a creek on her left. Whatever happened unless they airlifted her to safety she was in for a long, long wait.

She stiffened, thought she heard a movement, maybe one of the Wash seals splashing in the creek. A kind of flop followed by a loud click.

Click-click.

She started, listened. The curlews were calling again but their mood had altered; no longer the sad warbling melody but a shrill, more urgent call. One did not have to be an ornithologist to recognise the warning cry of a seabird. Beware, beware! Birds were on the wing, fast flying duck overhead, gulls wailing, a general air of disturbance.

Click. Clickety-click.

Susan Delphore froze, knew without any doubt what was making the noise now, heard the lumbering of heavy bodies dragging themselves up out of the nearby creek, claws scraping the banks to secure a hold.

The crabs had arrived!

She didn’t want to look, maybe if she closed her eyes and lay still she would not see them and they would fail to notice her, the illogical reasoning of an ostrich burying its head in the sand. The creatures might just be following the course of the tidal creek, surely they would be more intent on travelling the beds of the estuary rivers than scouring the marshes. Don’t look, for God’s sake don’t look. But she had to!

She twisted her head round, ignored the jerk of stretched neck muscles, cried out in terror at what she saw. Three huge shell beasts crouched less than ten yards away, their monstrous forms glinting in the wan moonlight, pairs of eyes that focused on her and glowed redly. And behind them more crabs were hauling themselves up out of the water, ravening beasts that belonged not to the ocean beds but to fevered nightmares, had no right to exist in a sane world. Crustaceans the size of cows, terrible to behold, lumbering forward again, recognising human prey and lusting for flesh and blood.

Susan managed to scream, a strangled shriek that died before it reached its peak, left her lips moving weakly, futile pleas directed at these terrible creatures. Please don’t hurt me, I mean you no harm. I’m Susan Delphore, Morland Delphore’s daughter, I was kidnapped by loony libbers, I don’t want to be here. Please go away. Please!

They were all around her, a jostling clicking semicircle of crabs, a dozen at least. Their tiny eyes bored into her, looked her over, but for some reason they held back. Almost as though they were awaiting a signal of some kind!

She was crying, shaking, her brain refusing to cope, a flickering film on a bent spool. They’re gods, her captors had said they were, supernatural monsters that were going to destroy Man and rule the continents of the world as well as the oceans. Gods! She shivered, experienced humility, a mortal in the presence of deities beyond her understanding. She sensed their power, their strength, and offered up an inarticulate prayer. I don’t want to die!

But you’re going to die! One of the crabs was standing over her, its huge shape blotting out the moonlight, only its glowing eyes visible. A rancid odour came from it, a stench of decaying flesh that brought the bile up to her throat. She wanted to close her eyes, pray that death would be swift and painless, but those watching orbs seemed to have hypnotised her. She was compelled to stare, to become a spectator to her own sacrifice.

Then they fell upon her.

She was screaming now, felt her bonds slacken but that was because her limbs had gone, severed in a matter of seconds, bloody lengths of flesh and bone being held and gnawed in awesome mouths, her attackers seeming oblivious of the blood that jetted on to them. And still the big crab stood astride her, a leader that had permitted his minions to take a share of the spoils. Now it was his turn!

Its shrunken features were lowered until they were only inches away from Susan’s. She smelled the foul breath, felt the slime that strung from its jaws touch her, adhere to her. She began to vomit, a limbless remnant of a human form convulsing in agony and revulsion.

A pincer touched her, rolled her over on to her face, over again on to her back so that once again she had to look up at her cruel tormentor. An obscene kiss, a cancerous suction pad clamped over her wide mouth drowning her final scream, bringing with it blessed unconsciousness.

The big crab took what was rightfully his, slit the human body from throat to groin in a single slicing movement; instant disembowelment. The creature lowered its ungainly body, bent its head to feed, slurped the warm bloody morass up into its jaws.

The others broke off and watched, afraid in case they incurred their leader’s wrath, meekly witnessed the filthy repast until nothing remained except dark stains upon the spartina grass. And then, as one, they elevated their pinpoint eyes, stared upwards at the moon, paid homage to their god, the one who ruled over them and controlled their entire lifespan.

Jeanette Delphore lay restlessly in her bed. In the adjacent single bed her husband’s breathing was deep and regular, its rhythm broken occasionally by a snore. The contented pig, she switched on the bedside lamp and looked across at him with obvious contempt on her sharp, drawn features. He didn’t give a damn whether Susan came back or not tonight. Or ever.

She and Morland had opted for separate beds a year ago; she told her friends it was because he was a restless sleeper and kept her awake. If they read between the lines all well and good. As a relationship her marriage to Morland was over. They would continue to live in the same house (damned right they would, she wasn’t moving out for anybody), and in due course they would occupy separate bedrooms. She had no regrets over that. What was a wife other than her husband’s unpaid whore? Her flesh crawled at the thought. She had never really been enthusiastic about sex, could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had actually orgasmed. Crude, bestial, not the sort of thing civilised people ought to do except for the purpose of procreation. Which brought her thoughts back to Susan.

The damned headstrong wench! Whilst her daughter lived under this roof she was going to obey parental rules, obey a code of discipline and morality. The trouble was Morland had spoiled her, he had made her this way. Fancy buying a teenage girl a Porsche for her birthday, that was just asking for trouble. Susan was stubborn, chasing the wrong kind of men just to be bloody-minded. Not only that, it was letting the Delphore name down, people would begin talking.

And where the hell was Susan? Jeanette glanced at the jewelled alarm clock by her side. 2.35 a.m. Her stomach knotted, she felt slightly sick; afraid and angry. And Morland was content to sleep through it all. Well, it was his duty to lie awake and listen for his daughter’s return as well as hers.

‘Morland.’ She leaned across and shook him roughly, tugged at the quilt. ‘Wake up.’

‘Huh? What’s the time?’

‘It’s after half past two and Susan hasn’t come home.’

‘Oh.’ It took Morland Delphore several seconds to return to wakefulness, a screwing up of his fleshy features, small eyes glazed, taking time to clear. Blinking. ‘Well, she said she wasn’t coming back tonight. You didn’t expect her to, did you?’

‘She was bluffing, in a temper. Just a threat on the spur of the moment.’

‘You ought to know our Susie better than that by now,’ he looked up at the ceiling, rolled his eyes, ‘It was your fault, you started an argument unprovoked, got what you asked for.’

‘I don’t like this boy, Daniel, or whatever his name is.’

‘David,’ he corrected her. ‘He seems OK to me, but she’s got to try a few. Christ, you can’t wrap an eighteen-year-old up in cotton wool, not these days.’

‘I’m determined she’s going to marry well.’

‘Which means that if you have your way she’ll still be a frustrated spinster at forty. Christ, you were bloody rude that night she brought him home. I was embarrassed. And not the first time, there’s many a business or social function where you’ve opened your great big clanging trap and put both feet firmly in it. And let me down. Why d’you think I don’t take you along to dinners any longer?’

‘I …’ Jeanette’s face was flushed except for twin white spots in the centre of her freckled cheeks. ‘Susan hasn’t come home. I want something done about it.’

‘Like what?’

‘You can ring that David fellow, find out if she’s there.’

‘She probably is,’ he grunted, made as if to settle down again.

‘Then if she is you’d better go and fetch her back. She might be sleeping with him.’

‘Which is the most likely suggestion you’ve come up with tonight, my dear.’

‘I won’t stand for it, I won’t have any daughter of mine behaving like that!’ Jeanette Delphore threw back her quilt, swung her legs out of bed, clasped her nightdress tightly to her body.

‘You bloody hypocrite!’ He laughed harshly. ‘For a girl who got pregnant out of wedlock herself that’s bloody rich.’

‘Then I shall have to phone this layabout.’ She strode to the door, wrenched it open. ‘And whether Susan’s there or not that man’s going to get a piece of my mind!’

Morland followed her across the landing, pulling up his pyjama bottoms, not out of modesty but to prevent his capacious stomach from spilling over the elastic. Down the stairs, across the hall, standing watching as his wife thumbed through a thick telephone directory.

‘Knight, isn’t it?’ She always talked to herself in these situations. ‘K … Kneale … Knight … D …’ She propped the book open with one hand, lifted the receiver off and began to dial with the other. Digits clicked into place. A pause. Then, far away, Morland heard the number ringing out at the other end. Jeanette was breathing heavily, priming herself for an outburst.

A voice, sleepy, Morland could not catch what it said.

‘This is Mrs Morland Delphore speaking.’ Loud arrogant tones, Christ he wished she wouldn’t keep using his name on these occasions. ‘Have you got my daughter there?’

A denial.

‘Are you sure you’re telling the truth?’

From where he stood Morland could detect the indignation in David’s reply even if he could not catch the words.

‘Two hours ago!’ Suddenly Jeanette’s anger evaporated, the fire in her instantly extinguished. The fingers holding the telephone still shook but with fear instead of fury. ‘I see …’

Slowly she replaced the receiver on its cradle, turned to face her husband and at that moment even Morland’s pity went out to her. She was close to tears, her voice trembled when she spoke.

‘Morland … she left … two hours ago!’

His stomach turned over, even his features blanched. He paused a moment just to check that he still had his self-control. ‘She’s probably … gone somewhere else.’

‘Where?’ Almost a scream.

‘I don’t know, do I? Friends. As I told you, she’s too stubborn to come home after a row like that.’

‘She hasn’t got any friends round here. You know we don’t like her mixing with the local riff-raff.’

‘She might even have gone to Elaine’s in London.’

‘Then ring Elaine.’

‘Don’t be bloody stupid, woman, you can’t go waking half the population just because your eighteen-year-old daughter hasn’t come in by two-thirty in the morning.’

Jeanette opened her mouth to shout a reply but at that moment the telephone rang, a harsh ominous sound.

They looked at each other, looked back at the instrument; persistent bleeping like a warning siren. You got the message that it was bad news without even picking it up.

‘Go on, answer it.’ Morland’s voice was a croak, a command that lacked conviction, embodied fear. ‘You’re doing all the phoning tonight, Jeanette, so you see who it is.’

‘No!’ She backed away, an uncertain retreat, an unsteady finger pointing at the phone. ‘You answer it, Morland.’

It probably took Morland Delphore five seconds to walk forward and pick up the vibrating receiver. It seemed like minutes, questions and answers pounding his brain. The police. Susan’s had an accident, in hospital. Or worse. Hallo, Daddy, I’m staying the night at Elaine’s. Hallo, Daddy, I’ve broken down. A puncture. Could you send Sam out to mend it, please?

‘Hallo.’

A momentary silence the other end but Morland sensed that somebody was there. He swallowed, waited. He could hear breathing. A drunk or a wrong number maybe.

‘Morland Delphore?’ The voice was muffled as though the caller had spread a linen handkerchief across the mouthpiece to disguise his tones. Sinister.

‘Yes.’

‘Your daughter hasn’t returned home.’ A statement, one that was loaded with confidence.

‘No … she hasn’t.’ Morland’s stomach was churning again. He tried to push Jeanette off his elbow. Damn you, get away woman.

‘She won’t be coming home.’ Dalek-like tones, loud and mocking.

‘Oh, my God!’ Jeanette was panicking, becoming hysterical, trying to grab the phone. He hit her.

‘The crabs have got her. Mister Delphore!’

He did not reply, he could not find the words. Some nutter, like those who used to phone threatening him that if he continued to trade in furs something unpleasant might happen. It hadn’t been a bluff, the crazy bastards had attacked the house. He swallowed.

‘She’s the first of many, Delphore. The first sacrifice!’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘All those who have harmed animals will be sacrificed to the crabs. Your turn will come, and your wife’s.’

A long silence, Morland thought they had hung up. He was sweating, still trying to prevent Jeanette from clawing the receiver out of his hand.

‘We sacrificed her tonight, Delphore. They took her out beyond Shep White’s, pulled her limb from limb …’

‘Shut up!’ Jeanette was screaming.

‘We’ll be phoning the Press just to make it official. This is the Eastern Counties Animal Rights Group speaking and we are claiming total responsibility. There will be others until all killing of animals stops. The crabs are gods, they demand human sacrifice and we have been chosen to obey.’

A click. The line went dead, the dialling tone purring with grim finality. The handset slipped from Delphore’s podgy fingers, swung to and fro on its flex.

‘She’s dead!’ Jeanette was screaming. ‘Dead … dead!’

‘It’s rubbish.’ Morland was shaking. ‘A hoax call. These guys are loonies.’ Loony enough to do what they said. ‘I’ll get on to the police, get them to find Susan, put our minds at rest.’

An hour after daylight the police search party checked out the call and found the bloody patch of spartina grass out on the marshland beyond Shep White’s where the caller had said the girl had died. Laboratory tests would prove whether or not the blood had come from Susan Delphore’s body. They were virtually certain that it had.

Later that morning the offices of a leading daily newspaper in Fleet Street received ‘official’ confirmation of the grisly murder, the caller’s voice muffled, his message abrupt and to the point.

The human sacrifices had begun!

6

Life aboard the gunboat moored on the River Nene below Sutton Bridge had become exceedingly boring this last week. That crab had provided some sport, a rare opportunity to fire the big gun outside routine target practice. A sense of achievement, a mention in the annals of the Ministry of Defence. But the excitement was short-lived. Back to the daily grind of eight-hour shifts, onshore leave a bore in a place that offered little in the way of entertainment. Even the watching crowd on the banks had dwindled to a handful.

The crabs were dying, the papers reckoned that they would crawl back to the ocean depths to die. Finis, a damp squib. This time next week, in all probability, the crew would be back in Portsmouth engaged in even more mundane duties than watching for mutant crabs that did not show up. Vigilance was relaxed unofficially, discipline waned.

Sunday morning dawned misty, a sea mist that crept across the Wash and in all probability would be dispersed by bright sunshine in an hour or two, a kind of early morning heat haze. It hung low on the river, thick grey vapour that swirled and eddied, made familiar shapes unfamiliar. Out in the estuary a Dutch cargo had dropped anchor and waited for visibility to improve before entering the mouth of the Nene.

The sailor on watch on the bridge of the war boat huddled in a sheltered corner and lit a cigarette. Fuck it, nothing was going to happen, why didn’t they rely on a civilian watch force, a kind of Home Guard? Every so often he raised his head, tried to see into the fog. Idly he wondered why those buoys were floating in midstream, something to do with the tides maybe or submerged mudbanks. And when he looked again the buoys were not to be seen which was very strange. But it was none of his business.

And then something scraped the bottom of the solid miniature floating fortress, had it straining at its moorings. The sentry lurched, grabbed for his rifle. The deck rose again, had him sliding back, dropping his weapon. Men were tumbling from their bunks, yelling.

The boat was sinking, its stern jutting up into the air, water pouring into the hold. Somebody shouted, ‘The bottom’s ripped out. We’re going down!’

Panic. The crabs had struck with devastating suddenness, their claws monstrous can openers that slit through the steel bottom of the gunboat, great jagged gashes through which the river gushed. The crew were abandoning ship, they had no alternative, no time to launch the small lifeboat.

Men hit the water, struck out for the bank less than twenty yards away. One disappeared, did not surface. Another screamed, went under. The muddy water foamed, turned pink, crimson.

Somewhere somebody fired a shot. The bullet struck something hard just below the water, glanced off. Another yell, ‘Crabs!’

Swimmers were trying frantically to reach safety. One was cut in half, the water around threshing as the crustaceans created a maelstrom in their lust for human flesh. Nobody made it ashore.

The damaged boat settled noisily in the mud, half-submerged, a steel defence that had proved ineffective against the might of the crabs, its crew wiped out even before the alarm on shore was raised.

Ripples in the deep water that might just have been the swift current, the incoming tide, or an army of crabs going upriver. A police patrol car radioed a warning to the bridge, called for reinforcements.

But it was already too late!

The suspension bridge was lowered, no river traffic would be allowed through until the mist lifted. A grey cold world, the kind of early morning you sometimes experienced in low-lying coastal areas. It would lift though. The road traffic was slow moving, a line of cars strung out behind an articulated lorry loaded with felled timber. Crawling, everybody driving on dipped headlights.

The steel bridge vibrated, gently at first, a tremor that increased, shook the whole structure. A uniformed official in his small box-like office looked up in surprise as his flimsy desk shuddered, a pile of papers toppled and floated. His amazement turned to alarm as he felt the floor shudder, wooden boards began to split.

‘Christ on a bike!’ He made a dive for the door. ‘An earthquake!’

A short time ago there had been a series of quakes in Wales and the West Country. Strong ones, powerful enough to crack buildings and shatter windows. But not here, not in Lincolnshire for God’s sake.

The floor was heaving up, he slipped and fell through the doorway, stared in terror and disbelief at what he saw down in the water through the murkiness. Living shapes rising up out of the current, huge shells which were being used as battering rams on the steel stanchions. Girders weighing hundreds of tons buckled and bent; steel supports bowed. And the tarmac roadway across the suspension bridge was breaking up, avalanching down into the river below. He caught sight of a body, arms and legs flailing, heard a scream amidst the din of screeching metal.

The log lorry had tilted, spilled its load. Huge tree trunks were rolling, gathering speed, bouncing, smashing into the light traffic behind. A small Fiat was crushed into a crumpled sheet of metal, the Sierra behind it spun around, pushed towards a gap in the disintegrating bridge. It wedged, was rammed through, catapulted into space.

Cars and vans were sliding into one another, a pile-up that was growing, slipping. Masonry and steel broke free, fell. Uninjured people were out of their vehicles, running for their lives. They never made it; the entire bridge began to collapse.

Slow-motion demolition, tracts of steel seemingly suspended in mid-air. Dropping. The river bed erupted, a frothing tidal wave that swamped the banks, dashed the wharf with devastating force, swept debris in all directions. For a split second the river bed was virtually empty, a yawning muddy chasm, the deep watercourse alive with monstrous crabs.

Then the water closed back in, a seething cauldron that buried wreckage and corpses, a mighty whirlpool swirling, bubbling, hiding the carnage. Tottering metal skeletons that would fall, within minutes the remnants of the bridge would be gone as though it had never existed, the A47 severed from the A1078, a vital link for industry and transport destroyed. The crabs had struck a strategic blow with all the cunning of a deadly foe, the planning of an enemy general.

Police cars and fire engines were racing to the scene, lining the banks of futile convoys. Drifting flotsam, disembodied limbs being swept upstream by the incoming tide, disappearing. More artillery arriving, infantry; a platoon of soldiers in combat gear, automatic rifles at the ready. But there was not a crab to be seen now. Somewhere deep in the treacherous current the crustaceans continued their deadly advance, a dying army bent on taking its final revenge on Mankind.

And until the mutant army was defeated, wiped out, the river could not be spanned again. Nobody was safe.

David Knight stared at the wall of his flat, noted every strip of peeling wallpaper, traced the flowery patterns without seeing them, his brain fighting to return to normality, struggling with grief and horror. Dry eyes that burned because the tears would not come, fatigue that refused to yield to sleep. A battle he must fight and win within himself, by himself.

Elongated shafts of evening sunlight merged with the patterns on the wall, created a symmetry that defied logic, shapes for the sake of shapes. Something to stare at.

He had spent most of the day at the police station in Spalding. Christ, it was as though he had been a bloody criminal, Susan’s murderer. When did you last see Miss Delphore? What did you do after she left you? Is there nobody to substantiate your story that you listened to records and then went to bed? Of course there fucking isn’t, I live alone.

What was your relationship with Miss Delphore?

Good friends.

When did you plan to see her again?

When she called round next time.

Her mother says …

Her mother’s a fucking nutter.

Fingerprints. A blood sample. Would you like a breathalyser to go with it? Don’t leave the area please, Mr Knight, we shall want to talk to you again.

At least they did not search his flat. Had they done so they would undoubtedly have found the single-barrelled .410 pistol and charged him with being in possession of an unlicensed firearm. When he had bought it ten years ago it had been legal, a 24-inch barrel, sold for the control of rats and grey squirrels. A hacksaw was all that was necessary to convert it; now it had a six-inch barrel and a small curved butt, could be concealed easily in a coat pocket. The choke in the barrel had been removed by this simple operation and now the steel cylinder was what was known in the trade as an ‘improved cylinder’. The old western gunfighters would have referred to it as a ‘hand scattergun’. Instant spreading of the shot charge, devastating at close range, only basic marksmanship required. David’s personal toy, it would come in useful one day, perhaps before very long.

He could not get the girl out of his mind, would not be able to for a long time to come. If ever. An admission now in that darkening lonely room, one that he had deliberately kept at bay until today. He had loved Susan Delphore, oh God, how he had loved her. His own stubborn inbuilt defence system to a personal relationship crumbled. Christ, he had been a bloody fool. Force of habit, you dated girls, screwed them if they were willing, but you didn’t get involved. A code of rules that kept you a bachelor, kept your freedom. All along you instilled into yourself that your freedom was the thing you valued most. Selfishness, kidding yourself so that you could flirt from bird to bird like a marauding pirate ship in the Caribbean. But it backfired on you in the end and you were the loser. David’s dry eyes burned and hurt.

It was all his fault. Susan had wanted to move in with him because she couldn’t stand that bitch of a mother of hers any longer. He was tempted, he could have had her in his bed for a whole night, longer if he had wanted. But something inside him had kept whispering, ‘Don’t get involved’. She would come back tomorrow, the night after, he could have his cake and eat it. Go home and think it over little girl. She hadn’t made it home, they had been lying in wait for her only a couple of hundred yards from her own driveway. A ruse to make her stop, the rest had been easy; the Porsche hidden away in an eyesore of a gipsy scrapyard, Sue taken out on to the marshes. And then …

He couldn’t continue his rage any longer. His fists balled, hammered on that fading sunlit wall, beat out a primitive tattoo of hate for those who had done this; jungle drums thudding out their message of vengeance. A man gone berserk, getting something out of his system in the only way he knew how. Because only then would he be able to think logically. A minute of madness that sapped his strength, had him sinking back on to the couch utterly drained and for the first time those smouldering eyes were damp.

He just sat there until darkness obliterated his surroundings, and only then could he see clearly in his own mind.

These same bastards had killed the Major, that wildfowler too. In all probability they were connected with those poisoned turkeys last Christmas. More than loony libbers, crazed psychopaths. And the police were no nearer catching them than they had been six months ago. Christ, they even suspected him. Every bloody imaginable question. What are your views on blood sports, Mr Knight? I enjoy ’em when I get the chance, I kept a gun shop, didn’t I, sold guns and fishing tackle. One point in his favour but they still weren’t satisfied.

David would find the killers, he promised himself that. When you’ve killed once one of two things happens to you; he recognised the lust within him, knew that it had to be satisfied. An added difficulty would be the police watching his movements but an ex-SAS man should have no trouble in losing his shadows. All the same the law would be an encumbrance.

These guys were clever, they had to be or they would have been under arrest long ago. Or rather, their leaders were. Their minions were police fodder, sent to disrupt a hunt, kept in the foreground whilst a much more insidious group lurked in the shadows. They had to be rooted out, dealt with.

David spent the next hour cleaning his improvised pistol. Something to do, a positive task related to his mission, the knowledge that he had already begun the hunt. Cold logic, his fury a smouldering cinder in the dark shadows of his mind which would not impair his judgement. A trained machine, the deadliest killer of all.

Some time later he slipped out into the darkness.

7

It had been a gradually sickening process right from the very beginning, Alan Cryke decided, and tonight’s episode in the churchyard had made him physically sick. It was all very well killing people at a distance, but when you came face to face with murder it turned your stomach. And the sight of that exhumed, partially rotted, worm-eaten corpse would haunt him in his sleep for the rest of his days. Pete was crazy, there was no doubt about it. The big fellow didn’t give a shit about animals, just used cruelty to them as an excuse for murder.

They had lain low since Susan Delphores death, they had had no alternative with police swooping on anybody who was known to have animal lib tendencies. But it was the alibis that beat the law, Pete was a past master at those. He went over your story time and time again with you, had you repeat it and repeat it. ‘If you tell a lie often enough,’ was his favourite saying, ‘in the end you get so that you believe it yourself.’ And that was true enough. The funniest part of it all was that the cops had pulled in that Knight fellow, held him for questioning most of the day. ‘A crime of passion.’ Merrick had roared with laughter. ‘They might even pin it on him!’

The law had picked up Bill Doan, too. Bill was a genuine campaigner, wouldn’t hurt a fly, even protested to the others about spraying garlic to throw the hounds off the scent in case the smell upset the dogs. But they hadn’t pulled Pete in, or Christine. Nor himself. But by Christ, they might do yet.

The crabs had wrecked the suspension bridge, twenty-two people had died in the disaster, and that was good news for the Group. Not so good was the report two days later that eleven crabs had been found dead a mile upriver when the tide ebbed, their bodies eaten away by the cancerous disease. Three more had been blasted to pieces by heavy artillery; euthanasia if you felt for their suffering. Pete Merrick called it unnecessary wanton slaughter. The crab gods were hungry for human flesh, they were demanding another sacrifice; they had to be appeased.

And standing there in the moonlit churchyard that night together with Merrick and Christine, Alan Cryke knew that he could not be party to another horrific killing. What they had done tonight was sick, mercifully their victim had been dead for several months.

Of course it was Pete’s idea. He ruled the Group, not a hint of democracy and nobody ever challenged him. ‘Just another red herring tonight,’ he had told Alan when they had met at the bottom of Royal Close after darkness. ‘Something to throw the cops off the scent but important all the same.’

Possibly even Christine had no idea where they were going or what they were going to do tonight. Alan noted how drawn her features were lately. Running scared, and scared to run. Poor kid, she was Pete’s slave in virtually every respect.

When they did not take the bikes Alan presumed that it was a local job whatever it was. They walked for an hour and a half along narrow country roads, diving into the undergrowth every time they saw the headlights of an oncoming car.

Cryke was uneasy, had an urge to take his balaclava out of his pocket, blend into anonymity beneath its claustrophobic covering. But you didn’t ‘mask up’ on the way to a job.

The moon rose, bathed the flat countryside in its ethereal glow, had you shivering on a balmy summer’s night because you were a fugitive, a criminal. A murderer. He wished he could have come up with some reason for not accompanying the other two tonight but, like Christine, he was a slave. Merrick commanded and you obeyed. Or else you to could end up staked out on the marshes as crab bait.

A dilapidated lychgate relied upon a thick holly bush to hold it upright, one of the posts roped securely to the trunk in a makeshift repair job. But eventually the whole structure would rot and collapse, end up as kindling for the vicar’s fire.

Oh God, we’re going into the cemetery! Merrick lifted the broken gate, opened it with scarcely a creak, closed it behind him. A narrow path led up to the doors of the small church, a thick wilderness on either side out of which peeped moss-covered tombstones tilted at crazy angles where the grave soil had subsided. An untended churchyard, maybe the verger was dead or senile. A ghostly church hiding in its own shadows, an air of dereliction about it as though its worshippers had turned their backs on God. You sensed evil in the atmosphere.

Somewhere an owl hooted. Alan was sweating even before he pulled on his woollen balaclava. Maybe the film companies come here to make those god awful gothic movies, they would save a fortune on building a set if they did.

The tall man strode on ahead, located a lean-to constructed of rusted tin sheets at the rear of the church. He did not even have to use his small torch to find the two shovels and Alan knew without a doubt that the other had cased the job sometime.

Pete thrust one of the shovels at him, kept the other himself, turned and began to make his way through the undergrowth, his companions following. Shadows and moonlight, trodden pathways and rambling briars that fastened on to your clothing, tried to pull you back. Don’t, in the name of God, don’t do whatever you’re planning to do. But God isn’t here tonight.

They came to a grave, one that had no headstone just a wooden marker, its carved number indecipherable in the half-light; an oblong of soil that sprouted only a shallow weed growth and a vase of wilted flowers.

‘Dig.’ A low grunted command, Merrick pushing his own spade into the soil, knowing that Alan would do as he had been commanded. Stones and earth showered to one side, the numbered stake was wrested from its position and thrown amongst the surrounding weeds.

Alan Cryke’s stomach churned, the chips he had eaten three hours ago came up and burned the back of his throat. He fought against vomiting because Pete would have been angry, maybe hit him. Christine was standing a few yards away just watching. Her face was in shadow, her expression conveniently hidden. Alan guessed she was scared too, you could tell by the way she wrung her hands together.

Digging, sweating, the mound of excavated soil growing, spilling and burying a lush patch of wild willow herb. Showering pebbles in a series of miniature avalanches.

Alan felt sick and frightened, an inborn fear of the dead manifesting itself in his tortured mind. Questions he wanted to ask and dared not; whose grave? Why?

A muffled grunt of satisfaction came from behind Merrick’s damp woollen mask as their spades struck something hard, scraped on wood. The coffin! They were standing in a hole at least four feet deep now, having to throw their excavations up high over their shoulders.

No, for God’s sake, leave it where it is, there’s a body in there. A corpse.

‘Tip it up on its end.’ There was a breathless excitement about Pete now, a renewed strength where Alan was flagging. ‘Then we can push it up over the edge.’

It took them ten minutes to get the coffin clear of the grave. There was no room to manipulate it, they got in each other’s way and Merrick cursed, but in the end the oblong box was in the open, lying in a shaft of moonlight, soil-stained and scratched. Terrifying.

‘Use your spade to prise the lid off. Rip the screws out.’

Christine had moved back another yard. She did not wish to witness the coffin’s contents any more than Alan Cryke did.

Polished oak splintered and split. Pete used his body against the lever of the spade handle and the lid yielded, broke longways. A shaft of moonlight slanted on white material. A shroud that was pulled away, revealing …

Christine gave a low cry of fear, clapped her hand to her mouth when her lover growled at her to ‘shaddup’. Alan wondered how much longer he could hold back his vomit.

A partially-decomposed body, arms placed piously across the chest, the features a horrific caricature, flesh peeling from the skeleton in strips, rotting. Stinking. The ultimate stench of death.

‘Get him out!’

‘No! Please, Pete …’

‘Get the fucker out else you’ll end up in there!’

Alan grasped a leg, closed his eyes, pulled. Pete was lifting the shoulders, rolling the corpse over the edge of the coffin, thudding it on to the soft ground. When Alan looked again it lay there, an arm outstretched, head stiff and staring up at the moon with eyeless sockets. A part-moustache, the lip rotted away with the rest of the bushy hair.

‘It’s him all right.’ Merrick was staring down at the corpse, a look of triumph on his face, his eyes protruding, glistening. ‘As revolting in death as he fucking was in life.’

‘Who?’ It was Christine who finally plucked up the courage to ask the most important question of the night. Whom had they exhumed, reviled?

‘Watterson, of course, Major Fucking Bloodsport Watterson. And the undertakers have sewed his bloody head back on!’

Alan looked with grisly curiosity. It was true, the man who had been beheaded by a length of taut wire had undergone ‘repairs’ prior to burial. Not a very expert job but sufficient. After all, nobody was likely to inspect. Except grave robbers!

‘Do the honours, Alan.’ There was a mocking gleam in those eyes behind the slit, an extended hand holding the execution sword, a moonbeam glinting on the wide blade. ‘Cut his fucking head off again!’

Alan Cryke swayed on his feet, thought for a moment that he was going to faint. A wave of sickening dizziness engulfed him and he used his spade in the manner of a crutch to support himself, muttered, ‘Oh God, Pete, no!Don’t make me, please.’

‘Cut his head off.’ Merrick had stepped close and the blade was now only an inch or so away from Cryke’s throat. ‘Or I’ll cut yours off and you know I never bluff, Alan.’

The moonlight was a misty blur. Out of the corner of his eyes Alan saw Christine standing behind Pete, saw the way she covered her eyes. One way or another there was going to be a beheading tonight, the dead or the living, and she did not want to see it.

Alan nodded, his brain wasn’t working properly, numbed in a merciful attempt to spare his reasoning and his life. He felt the coldness of the knife as his fingers closed over it, dropped to his knees and almost fell headlong. Actions that would revolt him later but right now he was an automaton carrying out programmed instructions. Cutting, pressing down on the neck. So easy, over in a matter of seconds, the head tilting. Falling. Rolling on the ground, face downwards, thank God!

‘Good man!’ Mock praise, Pete Merrick taking his weapon back, sheathing it without even bothering to wipe the blade clean. ‘A good night’s work. But just one more thing before we go …’

Alan Cryke stared in amazement, backed off a step. Merrick was bending low over the severed skull, his hand upraised. Fingers still and outstretched a deliberate aim being lined up. Then just one swift movement.

So fast you scarcely saw the hand move. A downwards chop, a brittle cracking and splintering sound and then, as it came back upwards, it was all Christine could do to hold back her scream of sheer terror. The skull had split, fallen in two halves, only strands of decomposing flesh holding it together. A severing that one might have expected from a sharp axe … but not from a human hand. And furthermore Merrick’s hand was unscathed, not so much as an abrasion on the flesh.

‘Now we can go,’ Pete turned away as he spoke. ‘They’ll find him in the morning. They won’t know who’s done it but they’ll know why it was done and that’s all that matters.’

Christine’s bosom was heaving beneath her tight-fitting navy blue sweater. She glanced at Pete, noted his triumphant stance, a warrior drawn proudly up to his full height, and she was afraid for herself; afraid because of what he would submit her to in the privacy of their stark bedsit before dawn broke. He was at his cruellest and what had, in the beginning, been masochistic pleasure for her had now become terrifying physical torture. But, she consoled herself, if things had not gone well tonight then it would have been worse for her because he would have vented his frustration, his anger, on her.

Alan was beginning to crack up, she could tell that just by looking at him, even whilst he wore his balaclava. His movements, his fear reflected in his furtiveness. He could not take much more, it was just a question of how he reacted. Suicide would be the easiest, the least problems for the rest of the group. Alan might just take the easy way out.

Lately she had been contemplating taking her own life. Only a lack of courage had prevented her.

The full impact of what they had done hit Alan Cryke some hours later in the council house bedroom of his parents’ home. Oh, sweet Christ, he hadn’t wanted to do that, he had only dug up the corpse, beheaded it because he knew that decapitation would be his own fate if he refused.

There was something creepy about Merrick; more than that … supernatural! The bugger could even read your thoughts, Alan was sure of that. And Pete didn’t give a shit for animals. Their cause was an excuse to kill, that was all. It couldn’t possibly be true that the crabs were gods … except that they did not have any right to be that size.

He pulled the light pull, flooded the small square bedroom with stark light from the bare bulb suspended over his bed. That was marginally better, helped a bit. At least he did not have that awful putrefied corpse face leering at him in the darkness. And he couldn’t sleep anyway.

Without Pete Merrick the group would revert to what it had been originally, a genuine gathering of animal lovers who protested at all forms of cruelty, were confirmed vegans and did their best to get the message over to others. Peacefully, a few skirmishes with the hunt and the police were unavoidable but they had never killed anybody.

He could not stomach any more. No way. The idea of killing Pete crossed his mind but he dismissed it almost immediately. It was virtually an impossibility, the bugger had eyes in the back of his head and he knew what you were thinking. He’d smell your sweat of fear, kill you first.

Suicide. Alan was close to it. There was a bottle of painkillers in the kitchen cupboard downstairs. All he had to do was to swallow a handful, just go to sleep. No pain, pleasant even, like dozing off in front of the television. But he did not have the courage to die by his own hand.

There were other ways of getting rid of Pete. The law would be only too pleased to put him away for life. Just one phone call, an anonymous one …

He sweated at the thought. Any contact with the police was frightening, God knows how he had stuck them out when they had grilled him over the Delphore killing. Sure they were suspicious of him but they could not actually prove anything. If they got Pete he’d grass on everybody once he knew the game was up, he wasn’t the kind to go down on his own. That phone call was tempting though.

But they might recognise his voice even if he spoke through a handkerchief the way Pete did when he called the Press. The cops had talked to Alan for hours, they surely knew his voice and he was not an expert at putting on fake accents. There was another way though …

The Press. No, they would put it in the paper that they had had an anonymous tip-off and it wouldn’t take Pete long to work out who had grassed, and if the police did not take him into custody immediately then Alan’s number was up for sure.

Somebody else … A brainwave, oh yes, he could shop Pete without him ever knowing! Phone the Delphore girl’s boyfriend, the guy who had been reported in the papers as saying that if he got his hands on these scum he’d kill them. Everybody said that, few would carry it out when it came to the crunch. Except maybe David Knight; he had the ruthless look of a vigilante about him, the sort who would leave a couple of muggers lying in a subway with their throats slit.

Alan Cryke trembled with excitement. Pete Merrick would get what was coming to him that way all right, and maybe he wouldn’t grass on the others then. Do it, boy, now!

Not now, I can’t go walking about the streets at four in the morning making phone calls. There’s police all over the place, soldiers too. Wait until morning.

It was a long night for Alan, sitting there on his bed with the light on, afraid of the darkness in case he saw that corpse’s half-rotted face staring at him with empty eye sockets. Accusing. He’d never forget the way he’d severed the head, as easy as cutting a slice of bread, the way it hit the ground and rolled …

It was 7.15 when he let himself out of the house and walked down the street. His father was on nights this week, wouldn’t be home until 8.30. His mother came down about eight to cook the breakfast. Alan would be back upstairs in his bedroom long before the household stirred.

His mouth was dry as he tugged open the heavy kiosk door, squeezed inside. Sod ’em for making the box all glass, you were like a goldfish in a bowl. A car cruised by and he turned his back towards it, began thumbing through a tatty directory. Knight, spelled with a K. The pages were stuck together, he had to prise them apart. Oh Jesus fucking Christ!

He found the number, dialled it, heard it ringing out. Still time to change your mind, Al. Maybe there won’t be any reply then at least I’ll have tried. Still ringing. Better give it up, maybe the idea wasn’t such a good one after all.

‘Hallo. David Knight speaking.’ The payphone bleeping drowned the voice.

Alan swallowed, almost slammed the receiver back. Instead he shoved the coin into the slot, waited for the bleeps to finish.

‘Hallo. David Knight.’

‘I’ve got some information for you.’ Oh fuck it, I should have used a handkerchief, it’s too late now.

‘Oh, yes?’ Disbelief, the voice at the other end suddenly harsh, reminding him of Pete Merrick.

‘About … about Susan Delphore. Her killers.’

A sharp intake of breath, a moment’s silence then, ‘Go on.’

‘It was the Animal Rights Group.’

‘Tell me something I don’t already know. I can read the papers as well as you, son. And you’ve just fetched me out of bed.’

‘I … but you don’t know exactly who killed her, who took her out on to the marsh at Shep White’s and left her for the crabs, do you? That’s what I’m ringing to tell you.’

‘I see. And who are you and how much is it going to cost me?’

‘It won’t cost. Who I am doesn’t matter but if this madman isn’t caught soon he’ll kill us all and a lot more besides. The Group are shit-scared of him.’

‘What’s his name then?’

Alan Cryke licked his lips. There was a lump in his throat, he had to cough in order to clear it, his shirt was clinging damply to his skin and an icy trickle ran right the way up his spine and into his scalp.

‘Well, are you going to tell me or aren’t you?’ Clipped tones, this Knight fellow wasn’t one to mess about.

The phone started to bleep again and Cryke fumbled in his pockets for another tenpence, found one and pushed it in the slot. Just in time.

‘You’re making an awful meal of this, mister.’ David was half-convinced that it was a hoax call, contemplated slamming the receiver down. But when you were searching for leads that the police had failed to find you didn’t throw anything overboard.

‘It’s true, honest it is, but I want your word that it won’t get in the papers that he’s been shopped.’

‘Feller, I’m not going to tell anybody, I want this guy for myself, every little bit of him.’

‘Okay.’ Relief, sensing the other’s sheer ruthlessness. ‘His name is … Merrick. Pete Merrick. Don’t be hard on the girl with him, she lives in terror of him, he’d kill her if she crossed him. I can give you his address.’

Alan felt sick when he emerged from the booth, experienced an overwhelming desire to run all the way home, up the stairs and into his bedroom; lock the door and stay there. But he forced himself to walk normally even if he did keep glancing behind him to see if he was being followed.

He had an appointment with Pete at the flat tonight. Sheer terror gripped him at the thought but he knew he would have to keep it. His life depended upon it. Until David Knight had exacted his vengeance on the killer Alan had to be an actor, a loyal follower and disciple.

He prayed that David Knight’s revenge would not be long in coming.

8

Pete Merrick was not at the flat, which for Alan was both surprising and disconcerting. Christine opened the door to his timid knock, and he stared in amazement at her.

Her lithe body was clad only in a black bra with suspender-belt to match, knee-length black boots gracing her shapely legs. Whiter than pale beneath heavy make-up, her dark eyes were ringed as though she had not slept. She might even have been crying, Alan thought. After last night it was no wonder, he reflected as he squeezed inside and she closed the door behind him.

‘Pete’s out.’ He thought he detected relief in her voice. ‘I’m not expecting him back for another couple of hours at least.’

Christine was having a hard time of it, he was sure of that. Pete was obsessed with this macho image of his, some kind of warrior that incorporated a Samurai intellect. Mad and dangerous.

‘I’m glad you’ve come, Al.’ She clasped his hand, squeezed his fingers and held them. ‘I’m scared to death, I can’t stand much more.’ She was close to tears.

‘Me neither.’ He found himself whispering, looking about him as though Pete Merrick might suddenly manifest himself in the room. Just thinking about him had your nerves all shot to hell. ‘I’ve been as sick as a pig after last night.’

‘Pete’s gone to the pub on his own,’ she went on. ‘He’ll come back drunk as a lord and expect me to play the latest little game he’s thought up. Lately it’s getting crazier and crazier. It’s that sword that scares me, the one he calls the Executioner. You saw what he did to that poor guy last night. He’s just as capable of doing the same to you and me.’

‘Maybe … maybe if we packed a few things and … and ran.’ Alan was still whispering, his voice a tremor.

‘He’d come after us.’ She shook her head, ‘It’s no good, we’d never escape him. The sword’s in the wardrobe, Al.’ The meaning of her words was not lost on him. He blanched, felt her squeezing his fingers again. You could kill him with that, Al. Even he couldn’t stand up to that.

Christine moved across to the wardrobe, pulled out the curved sword. In her hands it looked almost ordinary, the kind of weapon you might pick up at a second-hand shop to hang on the wall. She tested the blade gingerly; it was razor sharp.

‘I … I …’ he stammered. ‘We’d have to take him by surprise.’

‘Of course.’ She placed it on the floor alongside the bed and sat down, motioned to him to join her. ‘But we’ve got plenty of time, Al.’

He experienced a faint stirring in his loins, looked again at her semi-naked body. ‘You’re all dressed up ready for his games, I see.’ He laughed but it sounded strange, forced.

‘I have to.’ She tried to smile. ‘Otherwise he only gets violent. It wouldn’t be so bad if … if …’

‘If what?’

‘If he managed to do something.’ She was whispering now. ‘But he doesn’t, Al. He’s not like a normal man. He hurts me, turns me on, but it stops there. D’you know … I don’t think Pete could screw if he tried. He gets his kicks out of hurting a woman, builds up his own macho image. You know what I mean?’

‘I’ve read about that sort,’ Alan replied; he was beginning to get an erection now. ‘They reckon these rapists who strangle women get their orgasms that way without fucking.’

He sensed her lips close to his own, turned to meet them. Soft and warm, her tongue seeking entry to his mouth. He yielded, let her pull him down on to the bed with her. Fuck Pete Merrick, let him get drunk because I’m going to screw his girl and afterwards we’ll stick him like a pig.

God, she was desperate! Her whole body trembled with passion, her fingers pulling his own where she wanted them. Kissing him frantically, her eyes closed and maybe fantasising that he was Pete Merrick but Alan Cryke didn’t give a damn. Whatever the outcome Merrick couldn’t take this away from him.

Her fingers slid right the way down his body, grasped him purposefully. He tensed, heaved himself over so that he was lying in between her stretched thighs, felt the soft warmth of her aroused flesh and pushed into it. She cried out aloud with pleasure, gouged him with her fingernails and clung on. She was moaning softly, urging him to make up for everything that her lover had denied her.

For Alan Cryke it was a heady breathless journey, hanging on as his mount bucked this way and that, wrapped her legs around his truck as though she feared lest he might have a sudden change of mind. Rapidly they were nearing the brink of sheer ecstasy; any second they would topple over, locked in each other’s arms. Two bodies convulsed as one, rolled and writhed, almost fell off the bed. Shuddering in mutual harmony, clasping each other and then lying trembling together in the aftermath of their mating. And then their love-making was rudely shattered.

‘Very erotic.’ Pete Merrick spat on the floor, kicked the door shut behind him. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Christ, I wouldn’t!’

Christine gave a cry of terror as Alan withdrew from her, knelt there looking at the very man they feared most in the world. Even in his filthy denims Merrick was a terrible warrior, his dark eyes burning with hatred. And lust.

‘So.’ Merrick moved with the speed and surety of an attacking beast, retrieved his sword from where it lay on the floor beside the bed. A kind of low bestial snarl escaped his lips as he wiped the blade with his shirt sleeve. ‘You dared to touch the Executioner, eh. Fucking my woman is one thing but soiling warrior steel is another!’

Alan Cryke continued to kneel on the bed. Terror had numbed him, paralysed every muscle in his body. He did not even try to move.

‘Tie his hands, Chrissie!’ A barked command, one that had the girl scrambling to obey, using a belt that lay draped over the bedside chair. Cryke made no move to resist as his arms were pinioned behind him. In his mind he saw again Wally Orme kneeling on the marshes awaiting execution; he wondered how Wally had died in the end. Loss of blood or the crabs? It didn’t really matter.

‘Do you know what they do to thieves in the east?’ Merrick’s tone was flat and emotionless, almost a recitation.

Cryke shook his head, he wasn’t offering any suggestions.

‘They cut their hands off.’ Pete Merrick made a stabbing movement with the sword, flashed the blade. ‘That way they can’t steal again. As for those who fuck another guy’s woman,’ he paused, tested the blade and brought a thin sliver of blood to his thumb, ‘they make sure they never fuck again. Get me?’

Alan almost fainted. The room seem to tilt, now it was rotating, spinning, Merrick and Christine going with it. A leering countenance, a mask of manic hatred. The sword blade was dazzling, blinding Alan Cryke. He saw it coming at him but there was no way he could dodge it, felt its wind fan his face, heard the soft thud of sharp steel on bedsheets. And then the blinding pain for a few seconds before he fell forward into that deep abyss of nothingness.

Dawn was just beginning to spread its grey fingers across the eastern skyline when David Knight reached the wharf at Sutton Bridge. Dressed in a dark sweater and navy cords that blended with the night hours he was stiff and cold after a long vigil. Merrick and his girlfriend had not returned to their bedsit, he had been watching it for the past three hours. Which meant they were out somewhere and that spelled troubled for someone, maybe another crazed killing, an innocent death.

David stood back against one of the buildings to watch the dawn break, a kind of respite before returning to his flat to catch up on some sleep. Later he would continue the hunt.

The sky was lightening fast, he could make out the opposite bank of the river now, to his right a twisted steel girder that sloped down into the deep current from the last remaining stanchion of the suspension bridge, a macabre water slide. Line up folks, try the chute, straight down into the water, your money back if you can dodge the crabs and swim to the side.

It looked precarious, maybe some construction firm would come and cut it down before long like felling a dangerous roadside tree. David’s eyes surveyed the damage, ran down the uneven line. Christ, it would take a fleet of bulldozers to inflict damage on that scale! Something was on the end, just where the steel dipped into the water, a sack or something, dangling a foot or so above the current, swaying to and fro … Oh, Holy Jesus, it was a human being!

David tensed, stared in disbelief. It was growing lighter by the second and he saw that he was not mistaken. A body, dead or alive he didn’t know which, was bound hand and foot with strong rope and suspended from the damaged steelwork. Oh God, those trussed legs were jerking, whoever it was was still alive!

David broke into a run, it would not be too difficult to clamber along the bent and jutting girder, cut the unfortunate person free and slowly drag him back to safety. Maybe he could attract attention, summon police or army to help him. Too late!

His feet slithered to a halt and a gasp of dismay and horror escaped his lips. Something was stretching up out of the water, a curved scythe-shaped object that opened and closed; reaching up, touching the body, making it swing. Snapping at it. A giant crab’s claw!

Somebody on the far back shouted, men were running to the water’s edge, it was not light enough yet to discern whether they were soldiers or civilians.

The pincer snapped, made contact, severed the bound legs just below the knee. Blood spurted. Now the crab was visible, a rush of water as it hauled itself up out of the mud and struck again. This time it clamped on the victim’s waist and even from the bank you heard the crunching of breaking bones. Pulling, tearing, ripping the trunk in half, leaving behind a ragged mass of bloody trailing sinews from which gushed a scarlet flood.

A volley of shots rang out and water kicked up all around the half-submerged crab. A bullet whined away as it ricocheted off the huge shell and the creature sank back below the surface.

A few moments of awful silence followed. The soldiers held their fire because their target was out of sight, waited for it to show itself again. Whilst out there in midstream, spinning crazily above the water, a severed human body emptied itself of its life’s blood, briefly turning a patch of river water scarlet.

The bleeding slowed to a steady drip, the half-corpse steadied, came to a standstill. Everybody waited, heard the siren of an approaching police car. Soldiers watching, primed to fire again but the crab did not reappear. It had fed, satisfied its early morning hunger; it could be just lying there below the surface or it might have moved on. There was no way of telling. There could be dozens of them.

David turned away, grimaced in disgust. Without a doubt he had just witnessed yet another obscene sacrifice and there were no prizes for guessing who the victim was. Doubtless David’s informant had paid for his folly with his life. Every hour in which the madman remained free meant innocent lives were at risk.

David Knight felt the comforting weight of the .410 pistol in his pocket. All he had to do was to find Pete Merrick.

9

Christine was very frightened but she dared not show it. From a distance she and Pete had watched the big crab claim its offering and her companion had thrown back his head and laughed insanely as the carnage took place.

Now, back in the bedsit, his madness knew no bounds. The table had been moved into the centre of the cramped room, draped with a dark cloth. An altar, he explained. That in itself was bad enough but she shrank back in horror when from a fishmonger’s plastic carrier bag Pete produced a dead crab. A small one if you compared its size with that of the freak mutants, a large one by gourmet standards. He went to a great deal of trouble setting the crustacean corpse up in a lifelike stance in the centre of the table, positioned it so that it stood proud and arrogant, a miniature replica of its outsize relations who even now were massing to attack Mankind on the mudflats of the Wash.

His expression was fanatical, his eyes wide and staring, his breathing quick and eager. On one knee, watching that crab with awe as though he expected it to come to life, shamble and click its way across the altar towards him.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he muttered, ‘majestic. Can’t you feel its power, Chrissie, the force it gives off? It sees us, it knows that we are its subjects, our lives dedicated to helping the crabs to overthrow the human race. Those who serve the crabs faithfully will be saved. Can you not feel its living presence, its spirit alive in that body after death?’

She said ‘Yes’ because she knew full well that her companion would fly into a blind rage if she answered in the negative. She couldn’t feel anything. The crab was dead, it was revolting. Crab fishing should be banned, though, along with all fishing. She had heard somewhere that the fishermen boiled their crustacean catch alive to kill them. Man’s cruelty knew no bounds. On that issue her resolve was steadfast.

‘We must shed our clothing.’ He stood up, began tearing at his shirt and jeans with a sense of urgency as though they should have divested themselves of their garments earlier and it had slipped his mind. That dead creature which was not really dead might be angry at his oversight.

With reluctance Christine followed suit. Last night had been the worst so far, the most terrible of all the killings and she hated herself for her own part in it, her betrayal of Alan Cryke. In effect she had murdered him; she would never get that last look of his out of her mind, it would haunt her sleeping and waking, a hurt that went much, much deeper than the physical agony of the crushing castration.

She had helped Pete hang the injured body from that damaged girder, listened to Alan’s moans as he swung to and fro, twisted one way then the other, above the deep current. No way could she argue in her own mind that she wasn’t a murderess. Between them she and Alan could have killed Pete. Or could they? You never knew with the bastard, he was like a wild animal scenting danger. Alert and vicious.

‘Hurry,’ he breathed, ‘there isn’t much time.’

Frightened, trembling. Naked. A new fear suddenly manifested itself, one that escalated her terror to near-panic. Would there be another sacrifice to the crabs tonight? If this was the beginning of insane sacrificial rites then there was only one victim available – herself!

‘Are … aren’t the others coming?’ Voicing her most dreaded fears.

‘Others?’ he turned towards her and the sight of his face had her cowering back, twisted into manic rage, eyes rolling, almost disappearing so that only the whites showed. ‘Their presence would be the ultimate in sacrilege, a defilement of this holy place. Speak not of them lest the mention of unbelievers offend the gods of the ocean who will soon be rulers of the land as well. Last night we sacrificed a traitor, the others are no better, cowards at the very best who would desert us in our hour of need.’

Pseudo priestly tones that had her stomach balling, brought on a desire to urinate. She saw him straighten up, flick the light switch, plunge the room into darkness. She heard him tugging at the curtains, snagging them open along the warped rail, snapping a plastic hook. It bounced on the floor.

Soft ghostly light flooded the room, an aura of cold silver that emanated from a full moon that was just visible above the rooftops opposite. Unfriendly, eerie, a voyeur in the night sky glinting on that dead crab’s shell, creating deep shadows that for Christine held a thousand terrors.

Pete Merrick paused for a moment between her and the window, his powerful silhouette an apparition that had risen in answer to his evil prayers, a bearded antichrist summoned from the black beyond. A deliberate pose that lasted perhaps a couple of seconds, enough for her to feast her eyes upon him and cower before the rigid phallus with its crude circumcision as though once he had sacrificed his own flesh to appease his gods.

‘There will be death tonight.’ A gloating whisper. ‘May the crabs send us this David Knight so that we can feed him to them.’

He rejoined her, dropped to his knees, roughly pulled her down with him, an angry father determined that his wilful daughter should kneel and pray alongside him in church. Do as I do and don’t dare disobey. His grip almost made her cry out.

‘Tonight they will come, the moon has been sent to light their path, to guide them out of the ocean on to the land. We must make ourselves ready for their coming.’

She glanced sideways at him and was afraid at what she saw; the expression of fanaticism, saliva dribbling from the wide lips, his nose sniffing the air like a beast of the night scenting its prey.

‘Death to those who followed us and strayed from the path, cowards who were unworthy of our cause.’ A monotone chant, his voice scarcely recognisable. ‘May they die along with the cruel persecutors of animal life and the traitor whom our masters claimed for their own last night. The human body is an abomination, an abhorrence, a pestilence that must be wiped off the face of the earth. The crab, our god, demands human blood!’

Somehow she checked the scream that rose in her throat when she saw the sword in his hand, a wicked glint of moonbeam on cold steel that was still strained with corpse flesh; she did not scream because she knew that if she had done so she would have died.

‘Our god demands human blood!’ He dragged her roughly to her feet, pulled her across to the table, stretched out one of her arms until her fingers touched the cold dead creature in the centre. A repulsive contact that brought a whimper from her and the bile up into her throat. The sword blade scintillated again.

She closed her eyes, nearly fainted when she felt its sharp blade nicking her palm, a criss-cross cut that was sharp and painful. A welling warmth that could only be blood; she heard it drip. Only then did she look.

Pete wasn’t holding her any more but she did not withdraw her hand, left it where it was, stretched out and touching the dead crab, bleeding on to the shell, trickling down it, running on to the tiny horrific features. Then Pete Merrick’s fingers joined her own and she saw that he, too, was bleeding from a self-inflicted wound, the sword lying on the table.

‘The crab has our blood,’ he breathed. ‘See the delight on its divine face. So it was in the days of our ancestors in a far-off land. They took the small crabs for food, it was the way of a seafaring race. But in the depths the big crabs demanded payment, humans to be sacrificed to them. Maidens were taken to the shore, left trussed to await the coming of the gods from the ocean bed. Thus it is now. Together we offer ourselves to the crustacean gods.’

Christine could only see a patch of shadow where the crustacean’s face was, the dark fluid oozing down the sloping shell, dribbling on to it. Oh God, this was insanity. She feared what might be next in this maniacal ceremony invented by her crazed companion.

The crab lurched, a sudden movement that had her shrinking back, knowing full well that it was probably caused by a displacement of those dead limbs set in place by Merrick. Perhaps by the touch of their bleeding hands or an accidental brushing of the cloth that served as an altar raiment. Any one of a dozen rational things could have jerked the corpse but in the half-light of that room of madness the crab had been restored to life, had tasted their blood and lusted for more. You couldn’t believe anything else.

‘No!’ She struggled in Pete’s grasp as he twisted her arm angrily.

‘Fool, unbeliever!’ he cursed. ‘You deny our god?’

She was shaking violently, on the verge of hysteria.

‘We must humble ourselves, seek its forgiveness and swear an oath that those who have hunted and killed all birds and animals shall be delivered to the mighty ones for sacrifice.’

On her knees again, nodding to his chanting, swearing allegiance to a dead shellfish that had, only hours ago, lain on a fishmonger’s slab. Ashamed of her irrational behaviour, despising herself for all that she had done, her own part in this, however unwilling that had been. Utter degradation.

‘The human body is an abomination in the eyes of the beholder from the ocean depths.’ Pete’s voice was shrill, a half-scream. ‘It despises the form in which we are trapped. We must defile and abuse our bodies in its presence as proof of our loyalty.’

His bleeding hand went to his own body, closed over turgid flesh. She heard his heavy breathing escalate like one in the throes of a heart attack, tensing back on his heels, a demonstration that was already a frenzy, a manic self-abuse of the flesh and blood he had verbally reviled.

He yelled at her, incoherent words that were a command that could not be misunderstood, an order to her to do as he did or else die, frothing lips foaming with saliva, teeth grinding. She knew she had to obey.

It was a function against which her body rebelled, the touch of her fingers painful to tender places. Afraid to cry out in pain for fear of a terrible retribution from the man at her side. Sensations that should have been pleasant, escalating ecstasy, but her body rejected them, screamed at her to stop. But she dared not.

Acting, forcing herself, moans that she prayed the other would interpret as cries of pleasure. Pseudo convulsions.

Finally sinking down into an ungainly sprawl, lying there trembling violently, a final posture that needed no enactment; spent with fatigue and fear, her eyes drawn irrevocably to that miniature monstrosity upon Pete Merrick’s blasphemous altar, hating it for what it had done to her this night.

And hearing Merrick’s words again, drumming in her brain with awful repetition. ‘There will be death tonight.’

10

Joe Parlane had moved down from Scotland to the east coast during that unprecedented heatwave of 1976. A wrench, he was still homesick but to have returned to his native western isles would have been a mistake, would have rekindled the heartaches. He wanted to remember Mary as she was in the early days, he would never get over her death, he was resigned to that.

He was 6 feet 2 inches tall, a muscular black-bearded Scot who would have graced the packet of any brand of oatmeal cereal with his powerful rippling frame. At forty-three he was strong and fit, his only pleasure in life a wee dram that was no longer wee. The locals resented him, referred to him, behind his back of course, as ‘That drunken Scotchman.’ He had no business coming down here and fishing what was rightfully theirs. Damn it, what was wrong with Scottish fish? Once his small boat had been vandalised. They blamed it on the animal libbers but everybody knew that Jack Gedney was the culprit. God help Jack if ever Joe found out.

Joe struggled to make a living. Fortunately his requirements in life, apart from the wee drams, were modest. His tumbledown cottage was a shambles but with Mary gone it did not matter. He would plod on, eke out a living from fishing and whelking until his time came, and he would not be sorry when that day arrived. Once he had considered hastening it but deep down he was a God-fearing man and it would not have been right. God would have punished him, possibly denied him Mary’s company on the other side of the grave and that would have been purgatory. All the same he took incalculable risks, put to sea in weather conditions when all the other boats sheltered in harbour. And if the worst befell him then it would be God’s will. But so far his Maker had not deigned to call him and the ‘crazy Scotchman’ had always returned safely to dry land. Some said that he bore a charmed life.

His boat had become a multi-purpose vessel this last three years. During the summer months there were always tourists looking for a trip out into the Wash. Sometimes they wanted to fish and he took them out, didn’t give a damn whether they caught anything or not, that was their lookout, and so long as they paid their charter money that was fine. Mostly it was pleasure trips though, a fiver an hour which was good money considering he didn’t have to do anything else except steer the boat. They had their money’s worth, not a minute more nor less, out as far as Guy’s Head or Ongar Hill. Or a twenty-mile round trip to Hunstanton and back, and if they wanted to go ashore waiting time was £3 an hour. You didn’t get anything for nothing in this world, he once told a complaining family who had to fork out £35 before he moored the boat on their return.

He seldom smiled, not like the old days when he would laugh and exchange jokes with the trawlermen in Oban. The fun had gone out of his life that stormy night when his boat had capsized and thrown Mary and himself into the raging water. Damn the lifeboat crew, they had saved him when Mary was gone. He had struggled with them, tried to leap back into the sea but they overpowered him by sheer weight of numbers, brought him forcibly ashore, a half-drowned giant who cursed and raved and would have gone back out into the storm to look for his missing wife had a boat been available. It was three days before her body had been washed ashore.

He missed the isles, the mountains. This flat land and seascape was hostile to Joe Parlane, his only link with the past the ocean, for surely it was the same water that lapped against the rocky coastlines of Mull and Ardnamurchan and foamed in the Sound of Arisaig that crept in and filled the creeks on Holbeach St Matthew and Fosdyke. He did not hate the sea for taking Mary from him for there was no better place to die, just prayed that one day it would claim him too. When the Good Lord willed it.

Joe had not put to sea for a fortnight now. Not that the bloody crabs would have kept him ashore if it had been left to him. But it wasn’t. There was a ban on all small sea-going boats and a hefty fine if you disobeyed the orders. Coastguard helicopters were patrolling all the time, and you wouldn’t get beyond the mouth of the Nene.

His intake of whisky doubled and the worst part was that his money was running out; no income from fishing and the tourists were scared to go to sea anyway. You couldn’t sit around all day doing nothing. He contemplated cleaning the cottage up, doing a few repairs, but what was the point? If Mary had been here it would have been different, there would have been some incentive to do something. But she wasn’t and if she had been it wouldn’t have got into this state in the first place. So all that was left to do was to drink.

He drank, began watering his Scotch down to make it go further. Insipid, but better than nothing. Fifteen days and he had not spoken to a soul, then on the sixteenth he had visitors. A tall bearded fellow in dirty jeans and an attractive girl.

‘And what can I do for you?’ Joe’s greeting was abrupt, leaning on the doorpost and surveying his callers with red-rimmed eyes. The whisky was beginning to take its toll of him.

‘We’d like a sea trip,’ Pete Merrick smiled, turned to his companion. ‘Wouldn’t we, love?’

‘Yes … yes it’d be nice.’ She was nervous, averted her eyes from the fisherman. ‘I’d enjoy that.’

‘I canna help ye,’ Parlane grunted. ‘Nobody’s allowed to put to sea. Because of the crabs.’

‘We’d pay extra if you’d take us. Ten pounds an hour.’

‘Oh …’ Joe’s eyes narrowed but he shook his head slowly. ‘Canna do, not even for a tenner an hour. The coastguard choppers would spot us. I’d be fined fifty, maybe a hundred quid, and that’s na’ good business.’

‘But they wouldn’t see us at night.’ Merrick was insistent, sensing that money would be the deciding factor. ‘There's a full moon, we could slip quietly out, be safely back in a couple of hours. For fifteen quid an hour I’d say it was worth a bit of a risk.’

‘Fifteen quid …’

‘Sure. We’re honeymooners, a once-in-a-lifetime sea trip that we’d always look back on.’

‘I see.’ Joe Parlane screwed his features up into a hairy, thoughtful expression. ‘I’d go but the crabs …’

‘Since they attacked the bridge there’s only been an odd one seen. I reckon they’re all dead like the papers are saying. The cancer’s finished ’em off.’

‘Could be.’ A moment’s silence. ‘You’re crazy. You risk the crabs. Me, I don’t give a bugger for ’em. It’s the fine that’s my worry.’

‘Look, I’ll make a bargain with you. Twenty quid an hour and we’ll pay the fine if we get caught.’

‘You are bloody crazy.’ A hint of a smile, just a faint twitching of the thick lips behind the beard. ‘All right, it’s a deal, twenty quid an hour and the fine if we’re unlucky. Meet me at eleven tonight and don’t get shouting your mouth off in the pub.’

‘We certainly won’t do that.’ Pete Merrick smiled slyly and took Christine’s hand. ‘We won’t tell a soul.’

Joe Parlane worked furtively, made the boat ready under cover of darkness before the moon rose. All he had to do was to push it out into the water and they were away. 10.15. He would wait outside, the cottage was becoming claustrophobic.

He was in a sad nostalgic mood; those newly-weds had reminded him of his first weeks with Mary, that trip across to Mull when everything had been idyllic. They had spied an osprey on the first day, an omen of good luck. Fifteen years of good fortune snatched from his grasp in one mighty storm. His eyes were moist, maybe he ought not to have agreed to take this couple out tonight, it was going to be very hard on him. It wasn’t fair to them either, putting them at risk. No, the crabs were dead, they would have shown up by now if they weren’t. All he risked was a fine and the customers would pay that if the worst came to the worst.

Footsteps. He tensed, peered into the darkness, made out two approaching silhouettes, a tall one and another which was most certainly female.

‘You’re early,’ he grunted.

‘We’re eager.’ The man gave a laugh, is it too early to set sail?’

‘Not for me but you won’t see much.’

‘The moon won’t be long before it’s up.’

‘OK, it’s all right by me. Come on then, let’s go.’

Pete and Christine clambered aboard a small fishing smack that seemed scarcely bigger than a rowing boat in the half-light. Joe knelt down, untied a length of rope from a rotting post, pushed, strained every muscle.

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Merrick moved forward.

‘Sit tight, laddie, I can manage. I’ve had heavier cargoes than you.’

Straining, sweating, the vessel suddenly sliding, then it was afloat with a splash. The fisherman clambered aboard, swung the starter and the engine spluttered into life. Moving slowly, a creamy white foam in their wake, they headed out towards the Wash.

Nobody spoke, Pete and Christine perched on a crate in the stern, Parlane steering, a tall erect figure with flared nostrils breathing in the scent of seaweed and samphire, his thoughts several hundreds of miles away. This was how it had been that night, as calm as this when they had set out. The storm had come suddenly, hit them before they had a chance to run for cover.

Twinkling lights back on the mainland, a myriad of human life. Afloat was the only place you got away from it. You were on the run like a hunted animal. But you could not run from yourself, your memories.

The moon showed itself on the horizon, a deep orange ball that looked too heavy to hang suspended in the dark night sky. Rising, the next time they looked it was clear of the North Sea.

The girl had not spoken since they had come aboard, not even to her husband. Joe glanced in their direction; either she was the quiet kind or else she wasn’t enjoying it very much. Perhaps she was worrying about the crabs. He wished that he had asked for their money first, there was no guarantee that they would pay up. Twenty quid an hour, they either had to be loaded or crazy. Or both. He could fancy her, given the chance. No, he couldn’t, he wasn’t interested in women. Only Mary. And it had been a night very similar to this …

‘What’s that?’ Pete Merrick broke the silence, leaning over the side, pointing down into the water.

‘What’s what?’

‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you. Something just below the surface.’

Joe decided he’d better check. The girl looked deathly pale in the dim moonlight, probably terrified in case there were crabs about. It was reasonably shallow just here, a sandbank that could be dangerous if you did not know these waters. There were some buoys on their left, a warning to larger vessels.

‘What’s the trouble?’ Joe set the boat on course, went across to the side, looked down into the water. Ripples of elongated orange moon, dark shadows that could have hidden anything, even monster crabs. ‘I can’t …’

Suddenly his head seemed to explode. Blinding lights, excruciating pain, slumping forward, clutching at the side of the boat. A wave of moonbeams, came at him fiery red and then began to fade, everywhere going black, his last awareness that of strong hands pulling him back, saving him from falling overboard.

‘You’ve killed him!’ Christine gasped. They were going to kill this fisherman anyway so it did not really matter. Just wanting to put it off, shying from yet another murder.

‘Not quite?’ Pete dropped the heavy piece of wood back on to the deck. ‘Stunned. I might have fractured his skull but he won’t die just yet. Pass me that lifebelt. And that coil of rope.’

She watched in horrified fascination as her companion lifted the unconscious man up enough to slide the life jacket over his head and down to his waist. Securing it with the rope, looping it round the muscular shoulders, knotting it, leaving a trailing length of some twelve or fifteen feet, winding the end around an upright iron bar which was normally used to anchor the small trawl.

‘Help me get the bastard overboard.’ He had that maniacal expression on his face again, bright staring eyes, ‘But first …’

Christine saw the knife in Pete’s hand, the point of the blade poised over the unconscious man. Oh, Jesus God, he’s going to cut his throat!

The weapon descended, gently, a posture as if Pete Merrick was about to shave his victim, remove that mass of bushy black beard for some insane reason. A nick, a gash, blood beginning to well out of a swastika-shaped wound on the left cheek. Now the right one, a corresponding bleeding emblem. Bleeding profusely, scarlet rivulets pouring down into the facial growth.

‘The crabs will scent fresh blood.’ Pete sheathed his knife. ‘Like sharks do. It’ll fetch ’em.’

Christine looked about her. Trapped on a boat at sea, nowhere to run. And even if she had been able to swim she would not have dared to leap overboard. Even now the killer crabs might be lurking on this sandbank and the tiny fishing boat offered no protection for the humans aboard it. ‘Don’t just stand there, give me a hand.’

Robot-like she obeyed, lifted the limp legs whilst Merrick dragged the senseless man up on to the side. Blood from the twin wounds splatted on the wooden deck. ‘Push!’

Joe Parlane hit the water with a splash, half-submerged but the lifebelt kept him afloat, feet trailing, starting to kick feebly, head above water.

‘He’s coming round. Good, I’d hate the fucker to die without knowing what’s happened to him!’

The cold water revived Joe Parlane, had him shaking his head, opening his eyes. Floating away until the length of hempen rope tautened, held him. Dazed, understanding only that he was in the water, a mariner’s survival instinct uppermost, beginning to swim before he was fully conscious.

Pete moved to the wheel, slowed their speed to two or three knots. Chugging along, trawling their bleeding human crab bait.

‘Oi!’

Christine watched as the injured man attempted to outswim his tow rope in an effort to reach the boat but there was no way he was going to make it. A bleeding frightened face, hands clutching the rope. His curses were drowned by the noise of the engine.

Merrick was steering and scanning the water, trying to will the crabs to appear, Christine gripping the stern rail in anguish. I’d help you if I could even if you are a fisherman. I didn’t want him to do this to you but I couldn’t stop him, please believe me. Joe didn’t, he was screaming at her, blaspheming, swamped by the swell from the boat. She prayed that he would drown before …

Suddenly the water began to churn, waves where previously there had only been slight undulations, rocking the boat crazily. She lost her footing, fell back, heard Pete shouting, ‘They’re here. The crabs are here!’

Pete moved fast, somehow managing to keep his feet; any second the boat might capsize. Treading on Christine as she rolled on the deck, kicking her for daring to impede him. Slashing and hacking with the knife in an attempt to sever the rope and free the craft from the boiling crustacean cauldron as the creatures fought crazily over their prey.

The rope parted, the boat shot forward, something hit the underside, rocked it. Unmanned, the vessel careered crazily on a zigzag course. Christine was groaning, trying to massage her head and her ribs at the same time.

Merrick made it back to the wheels, brought the boat under control, increased speed. Only then did he look back.

One brief glimpse of a bloody melee on a jutting sandbank, crab pincers holding aloft an unrecognisable chunk of torn meat that poured blood, a macabre setting beneath the full moon. Then the crustaceans submerged, were gone as though they had never been. They had accepted the offering and were satisfied.

Christine was kneeling on the deck, an ugly bruise staining her pale forehead, blood trickling from a cut lip. Sobbing, shaking.

‘Did you see it?’ Pete’s shout was euphoric, crazed. ‘They came. I summoned them and they came! They know that we are their disciples, that we worship them!’

She was sick with terror. Only by sheer luck had they escaped the fury of the crabs and her maniacal lover was convinced that the monsters had spared them. Better would it have been had she and Pete died. Now there would be more crazed sacrifices, innocent lives lost.

He stood there, arms upraised in an unholy salute to the moon and the creatures it controlled. From his lips came that same monotone chanting that had terrified her in the bedsit on the previous night, the fanatical worship of a pseudo deity. He promised them sacrifices and blood, hailed the day when they would rule the world.

And Christine knew that there was no turning back for either of them.

11

David Knight knew that they would come for him. If not tonight then tomorrow. An intuition, a hunch, instincts which had served him well during his SAS days, the reason why he was still alive. The Group doubtless knew that Alan Cryke had grassed on them which was why the informer had been sacrificed to the crabs. In all probability the killers had tortured him, extracted the information they required before taking him down to the river and suspending him from that girder. In which case they knew who their enemy was. They would not disappear into hiding like rats disturbed in a granary; they were in a corner and they would turn and fight. And kill.

The prospect of being the next sacrificial victim was not a pleasant one. In fact it was decidedly unnerving even to a man of David’s calibre. But he, too, would fight. Killing did one of two things to you, as he had told Susan Delphore. In his case it had whetted his appetite.

He had slept later after a night of fruitless hunting and now he was fully refreshed. He poured himself a large whisky, wiped his .410 pistol leisurely with an oily rag although it did not need cleaning. His own kind of worship, paying homage to a weapon, savouring its cold touch, its balanced weight in his grip. A means to kill.

He loved the feel of it, the way it swung up from the groin, came to bear instantly on a variety of targets in the room with unerring accuracy. The art of the gunfighter; not to blaze away haphazardly at foes who outnumbered him but to swing independently on each separate target. Swing, sight, fire, lower. That way you got your man and the odds were that he would miss you if he shot from an aiming position repeatedly.

The .410 was a single-shot gun and that was a disadvantage but not one that was insurmountable. He practised again now, a cartridge in the chamber, three ‘spares’ gripped between the fingers of his left hand where the digits joined the palm. His supporting hand, the one used to grip his right wrist as he took a lightning sighting. Swing, sight, fire, lower, eject the spent case (manually), reload, swing … Again and again until reloading was a swift smooth operation, all part of the rapid fire procedure. Only an automatic would have been faster. He was well pleased.

He rested, wondered how many of them would come. Merrick by himself, a lone wolf assassin? Possibly. The girl would offer no problem. Maybe two or three hangers-on. It was unlikely that they would be armed with firearms. More likely knives or bludgeoning weapons. It was like old times.

He would get them, he was sure of that. But shooting was too good for them. He tensed with rage and hatred as he remembered what they had done to Susan. And, by Christ, they were going to suffer for it!

This is bloody stupid! With a supreme effort he got himself under control, forced his military training to the surface. You weakened yourself with emotion, breached your own defences, put yourself at a disadvantage; blinded your reasoning, impaired your judgement. To kill efficiently you had to kill impassively.

David took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He was trembling slightly but after a few minutes the tremors died like those of a receding earthquake. He lay back on the bed, closed his eyes. His breathing became regular and he dropped into a shallow sleep. A trained slumber in which his senses continued to be alert. The slightest sound would have awoken him, precipitated him into instant action, the loaded pistol by his side.

It was dark when he awoke. A glance at his watch showed him that it was 10.15. The moon would not rise for another couple of hours yet and that was good because the darkness was a valuable ally, cloaked him in a protective aura of invisibility whilst his own eyes would continue to function. He sat there on the bed, the .410 resting in his lap. They would come, there was no doubt about that, his intuition would not let him down.

It was after midnight when he heard a faint sound. The barely audible creak of a floorboard. Timbers often creaked in the nocturnal hours when other sounds were absent but his trained mind differentiated between a stair that had moved of its own accord and one that did so under the weight of a human body. A rustle, a waft of air. Even the scent of BO. They told a story as plainly as the printed page of a paperback novel. Somebody was creeping up the stairs. They were on the small landing now.

Suddenly David Knight stiffened, experienced a momentary pang of alarm coupled with another unmistakable smell. Petrol! Realisation, a warning that screamed out at him, precipitated him into action.

Two silent barefooted steps took him to the door, the fingers of his left hand depressing the Yale lock noiselessly. The door was eased back clear of the jamb, hurled open in the same instant that he dropped into a low crouch, the muscles of his legs braced into a springboard. In the gloom he made out a silhouette, a figure poised, a bottle in one outstretched hand, something faintly rattling in the other. David Knight leaped forward even as realisation that the intruder was about to ignite a petrol bomb dawned on him.

Airborne, feet drawn back, kicking outwards. Striking. Even on impact he realised the frailty of the other, the slight boyish frame that was no match for his own powerful body. David’s feet sank into soft abdomen, doubled the other up with a half-cry. The smash of breaking glass, the death rattle of a partly filled matchbox bouncing down the stairway, coming to rest in the hallway below.

Astride his adversary, grabbing an arm, rendering the other powerless; applying pressure, twisting the limb to within a fraction of snapping.

‘Too slow,’ he muttered, ‘five seconds too slow, you bastard. Now, let’s go inside and have a chat.’

Inside the flat David kicked the door shut, did not need to switch on the light to see the intruder. A typical dropout, long greasy fair hair, disconsolate features covered with unsightly acne like a growth of barnacles on a rock face. Jeans, a cheap zipper. And overall a strong unwashed odour.

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘Nothing to what I’m going to do!’ A whisper, keeping well clear of the window. ‘How many more of you are there?’ The blank expression on his captive’s features told him that this youth had no companions. A lone wolf, a mere cub. It was disappointing, an anticlimax. He had fully expected the psychopath, Pete Merrick, in person. Nevertheless his anger was unabated. They had killed Susan, the Group. Not just one man.

‘Very amateurish,’ David sneered, watched the other writhing and clutching his groin with his other hand. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Get … fucked.’

‘Merrick. The madman.’

The other’s eyes answered in the affirmative, amidst a blaze of hate and pain.

‘Well, we’re going to have a questions and answers session.’ Knight crossed to the window, pulled the curtains before switching on the light, surveyed a specimen of downmarket rebellion, the bottom end of the social scale. Offensive but cowardly once you had broken down the initial flimsy barrier of resistance. Physically hurt and halfway there already.

Two short lengths of plastic rope; the other’s struggles were merely token ones as he bound wrists and ankles. ‘You’re unlucky, I’m not going to hand you over to the police.’

A look of relief answered his words. Before long this despicable specimen of loony libbers would be pleading for the police. A fine, maybe a detention centre or community service. It was no deterrent for one who had embarked upon the first step of terrorism, the ugly face of violence which was fast replacing peaceful demonstrations. This one would not be missed.

‘Why did Merrick send you to kill me?’ David lit a cigarette; the implication was obviously lost on his prisoner.

No answer.

The youth’s jeans were torn, possibly by a shard from the broken bottle that had miraculously only faintly scratched the flesh beneath, exposing an area of grimed thigh. David stooped, ripped the cloth, shredded it right down below the knee and in the same movement touched the skin with the lighted end of his cigarette. The other screamed, arched his back as he jerked.

‘Scream all you like, my friend, don’t feel inhibited. Nobody will hear you. The other two flats have been empty for weeks, perhaps you didn’t notice the “to let” signs on your way up. No, I don’t suppose you can even read. Now, I want some answers to my questions. Otherwise I’m afraid you’re going to resemble a modern-day dirty male version of Joan of Arc without any consolation of martyrdom.’

David drew on his cigarette, made the end glow red. Expelled the smoke slowly in twin streams.

‘He said to kill you, said you were after the Group.’

‘True.’ A smile. ‘But why didn’t he come himself?’

‘I dunno. You don’t ask ’im questions like that. You don’t ask ’im any questions at all. If I ’adn’t come ’e would like as not ’ave killed me. A lot of the Group ’ave split up because they’re shit scared of Pete. ’Adn’t seen ’im for a week or more and then ’e turned up and said Billy you’re goin’ to do a little job for us.’

‘Right, Billy, you’re all shit scared of Merrick, we’ve established that much so far and you’ll bust your guts to obey him. But I need to know where he hangs out for a start.’

Fear paled the acne, rolled the eyes.

‘He’s moved. Left the flat.’

‘When?’

‘Today. The cops are watching him too closely. I don’t even know where to contact him to say …’

‘That you failed miserably in your mission.’ David’s eyes were granite chips burning into the bound youth on the floor but he knew that the other was telling the truth.

‘I’ll find him. The girl too. Now, tell me about the sacrifices.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’ Leaning forward, drawing hard on the cigarette again until it was an ember of red hot tobacco.

‘All right.’ Gulping, vainly trying to squirm his body out of his captor’s reach. ‘I don’t know much. I’ll tell you what I know.’

‘Go on. And make it quick.’

‘I didn’t ’ave nothin’ to do with the killings.’

‘But you were there.’ A guess.

‘I didn’t want to go but Pete would’ve sacrificed me if I ’adn’t gone along. I don’t know anythin’ about Cryke though. Pete and Chris must’ve done that one by themselves.’

‘And Susan Delphore?’ The piercing eyes misted briefly.

‘I told you I didn’t bloody well want to go. They made me, I swear it.’

David Knight’s knuckles whitened, his lips became a thin bloodless slit. ‘Tell me how you kidnapped her.’

‘It was easy. Alan Cryke lay in the road like ’e’d been run down. She stopped and we was waiting.’

‘And the sacrifice?’ Jesus, could he control himself much longer?

‘Out on the marsh. Pete made ’er strip, staked her out. Left her.’

‘I see. You’re a despicable little wretch. Weak but as bad as the others.’

‘Pete’s crazy, you don’t know him, he’s …’

David Knight reached down with both hands, long powerful fingers spreading, flexing; closing over the throat, choking the scream just as it began. Thumb on the jugular vein, fingers pressing hard on the carotid artery. The acned features began to suffuse with blood, the eyes bulging, bubbles that threatened to burst at any second, beginning to film over.

He felt his victim go limp. David straightened up, went to the cupboard in the corner and poured himself a stiff whisky. Like he had done the night Susan Delphore had called; that last time. Oh Jesus, it hurt just remembering.

He finished his drink, turned back to the man on the floor and reached for his pocket knife. He cut the bonds; they would not be needed any more. Then he lifted a sports jacket off the back of the chair, shrugged into it, slipped the pistol into his pocket. All we are waiting for now, he smiled mirthlessly, is for our friend here to come round.

‘Wakey, wakey.’ David Knight prodded his captive’s ribs with a foot, ‘Time for walkies.’

There was no response. The other lay lifeless. A sudden thought that Billy might be dead had David dropping to his knees, bending down to check a pulse. And that was when the other suddenly came to life. The suddenness of the revival took David completely by surprise. Even as the eyes flickered open a clenched fist powered upwards, took him on the point of the jaw, threw him backwards.

Blinding flashes before his eyes temporarily robbed Knight of his vision, just a dim awareness that Billy was very much alive, springing up to his feet and running for the door.

David heard it open then slam shut, listened to the hammering of footfalls across the landing and down the stairs, fading when they reached the street outside.

‘Hell.’ David Knight dragged himself up, shook his head to clear it. He spat something out, a small particle of bone that pinged and bounced on the floor. A chipped tooth was the least of his worries right now.

He broke into a run, followed in the steps of his escaped captive down the stairs and outside. He paused, listening, managed to pick up those receding footsteps again in spite of the roaring in his ears. In all probability Billy was fleeing blindly, anywhere so long as he got away from his captor. He had to overhaul him at any cost.

His eyes alighted on his parked car. He would be better in the Fiesta than on foot, particularly as the other appeared to be heading out towards the countryside. Blind flight could be matched by methodical pursuit. When Billy left the road David would follow on foot.

Two hundred yards further on the twin headlights of the car picked out the fleeing man, had him stopping and turning like a frightened rabbit caught out in the open by a poacher’s lamp. At bay for possibly three or four seconds before he turned and tried to leave the road but by then David was screeching the Fiesta to a halt only a matter of yards away.

There was a deep ditch filled with water by the roadside. The fugitive hesitated again; his dilemma – the muddy water or the man gaining on him. Seconds later David grasped Billy’s arm, shoved the pistol into his ribs.

‘I think you’d better come with me after all,’ David Knight snapped, ‘I owe you for a broken tooth and I’ll keep that in mind if you try any more tricks. Now, into the car. And hurry.’

Billy stood there, made no attempt to move. David pushed him; the other staggered, would have fallen if he had not caught him.

‘Christ Almighty, do you understand …’ David’s voice trailed off and he stared into the acne-ravaged face of the other in the moonlight. Shock that almost had him backing off.

‘Da … da …’ Billy grinned, gesticulated aimlessly.

Only then did David Knight understand. The other’s mind had gone, temporarily or permanently he neither knew nor cared. All he knew was that he had an idiot on his hands, a youth with the mind of a three-year-old child.

‘Da … da …’ Billy said again.

‘We’re going rides and then walkies.’ Christ it was enough to send you daft talking like this to a fully grown youth. ‘Now, into the car and sit still or else I’ll have to hit you again.’

Billy offered no resistance as David pushed him into the passenger seat. The rear seat was too much of a risk; he wanted his companion where he could see him. The concussion might only be temporary.

A steady drive following the winding country lanes, cutting back in towards the shore, once passing a police car travelling in the opposite direction. Past Morland Delphore’s house. He tautened, kept his foot hard down on the accelerator, tried not to look. In the reflected light from the facia he glimpsed that pimply face smiling inanely. You bastard, and you don’t even know what it feels like to go on your last ride. But she did, oh my God what she must have gone through!

A short distance further on he turned off the road and the car bumped down a wide cart track, finally emerged on to an open tract of rough ground below the sea wall. A piece of black boarding had the words CAR PARK painted on it in white for the benefit of wildfowlers and tourists. Park here and enjoy a walk on our beautiful unspoiled saltmarshes.

David had done with the baby talk, it was all he could do not to drive his fist into the grinning face of the idiot he had created this night as he hauled him out, began to pull him along beside him.

‘Da … da …’

Knight almost hit him, somehow managed to restrain himself. The other was pointing up at the moon, making grunting noises as though at any moment he might undergo a physical change, turn into some mythical beast. Fascinated with the silvery orb that hung above them, smiling up at it. Benign, totally unaware.

The going was difficult. David was reluctant to flash his torch more than was necessary in an endeavour to ascertain the depth of a creek before wading through it, his boots squelching in the sticky mud. His companion appeared to enjoy it, burbling with glee as he stepped in a deep place and the water came almost up to his waist.

Duck were on the wing, a bunch of teal piping in alarm at this nocturnal intrusion. A redshank called from close by and mallard quacked. Otherwise deserted marshland, two human shapes taking a zigzag course seawards.

It took them almost half an hour to reach the edge of the mudflats. David was sweating, the other beginning to tire; twice he had had to prevent him forcibly from sitting down for a rest.

‘Now you can sit down.’ He pushed Billy back on to the soft wet grass.

‘Arr-da … da di …’ laughing, pointing up at some duck which crossed the face of the moon like broomstick witches on an urgent mission.

‘Nice here.’ David spread his arms. ‘You … stay … here … Wait.’

‘Na … na …’ Alarm on the youth’s face, stumbling to his feet, clutching at David’s arm.

Oh Christ Almighty, just like a kid, he doesn’t want to be left. And I don’t want to stake him. I’m giving him a chance. Like a macabre obstacle course, find your way back to the sea wall and you’ll live, spend the rest of your life in a mental hospital. Fail and you die. You might be lucky and fall in a creek and drown. But I hope the bloody crabs get you first. But in the meantime I have a problem.

‘Na … na … na …’

‘Look.’ An idea, glancing round, seeing rocks lining the tideline. ‘Let’s build a castle, eh? I should have brought along a bucket and spade.’

David began collecting rocks. Small boulders for a square base, even smaller ones placed precariously on top of them, the youth watching, fascinated.

‘Come on, you have a go.’ Pointing, picking up a flat stone, handing it to him.

‘Uh … ah … aaah …’ Billy seemed to understand, placed it on the small wall, grovelled in the mud for another. Made petulant noises when the first one toppled off.

‘That’s the idea, stick at it.’

He was engrossed in his clumsy building, chattering and laughing to himself, even the moon forgotten. A game of life and death. David felt a momentary pang of pity, dispelled it angrily. I don’t feel one bit sorry for you, laddie, because you did worse things to my girl. You’re vermin that has to be destroyed for the good of everybody.

David Knight began to edge away, slow backward steps, his eyes fixed on the youth the whole time. The tide was well out, if he could make it back as far as the wide creek he had a vantage point from where he could watch unseen. I want to witness this, a ringside seat. A Roman Emperor awaiting the entry of the lions.

David made it to the creek, slithered down the sloping muddy side, lying full length, clutching at a clump of spiky marsh grass to prevent himself from sliding all the way down to the muddy channel of water below. Wet and uncomfortable but he barely noticed it. His pulses began to race. Come on you crabs, don’t let me down.

An hour and nothing had happened. Billy was still busy building his rock castle. Twice it had collapsed and he had thrown a tantrum, kicked the stones and clutched his foot in agony, shouting with rage. Then he had begun to rebuild it.

The moon was past its zenith, beginning to dip in the western sky; the stars had dulled. David scanned the eastern horizon, thought he saw a faint sliver of grey. The buggers weren’t going to show up. Maybe they were all dead, or gone someplace else. Which meant that this murderer under sentence of death would probably be picked up by a patrolling helicopter once daylight came. Shit!

Suddenly a throaty cry had David jerking up in the predawn darkness, a yell of terror that no normal human voice was capable of; a cry that might have come from the bestial inhabitants of some sub-tropical jungle upon being surprised by their deadly enemies.

The youth had forgotten his castle building. For a moment he stood upright amidst his fallen rocks staring seawards, a wide expanse of flat glistening mud stretching on out to the distant tideline. In front of him, no more than thirty yards away, were shapes that might have been huge boulders except that they moved, shambled towards him. Clicked like huge castanets. Eyes that burned like rubies in the moonlight.

Click-click-click.

A slow advance, David counted eight of them fanning out in a half circle, seeming to gain momentum now that there was no longer any need for stealth. Cumbersome beagles intent on running down a hare before it reached full speed. The crabs had arrived.

Another cry of terror and then the youth turned to run. His limbs seemed incapable of co-ordinating, legs that got in the way of each other, slowed him up. He fell, struggled back to his feet. Crying like a child, a pitiful sound if you did not recall Susan Delphore’s fate.

Up on to the saltings, staggering, pulling up sharply when he came to a creek. He tried to wade it, became fast in the mud. Panicking. Somehow he extricated himself but the crabs had gained another few yards on him.

Clickety-click.

Following the twisting course of the creek, afraid to try to cross it again, meeting up with an intersecting one. Doubling back.

Oh, Mighty Jesus, he’s coming this way, bringing them with him! David ducked his head low, instinctively pulling his pistol from his pocket. A puny useless weapon.

On a flat straight course a man might have outdistanced the crustaceans, there was no way of telling, but out here in their own domain the advantage was theirs. They could cross gullies like amphibious tanks, make up for any distance they lost on the flat. And the human conceded another couple of yards. If he continued on this course without veering it would take him directly to the hidden watcher.

And then the fugitive fell. David breathed an audible sigh of relief, pressed his face into the mud. Fifteen yards from him, no more. Please God he doesn’t get up again!

The other got to his knees but no further, knelt there staring at his attackers, the fading moonlight flooding features on which there was no longer terror. Just a passive idiotic smile, arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture, incomprehensible chattering that was rising to a crescendo.

The crabs halted, even they seemed perplexed. Their prey always fled, screamed in terror. This one was now coming towards them, unafraid. They paused with pincers raised, antennae erect. An outstretched human hand patted the nearest monster as though it was some harmless zoo exhibit. DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. But you can touch them. The flat of a palm smacked on hard shell.

That was when the giant crabs went berserk.

The watching David Knight winced as the crabs closed in on their unsuspecting prey, a forest of slashing pincers obscuring the other for a second or two. A cry of pain and terror and then a wriggling body was lifted high into the air, one of the creatures attempting to steal the meal of human meat for itself. A melee of enraged crustaceans threw themselves on it, pounded mercilessly at the protective shell with their mighty claws. Hissing, buffeting, sheer weight of numbers pulled the rogue beast down. It clenched its pincers in sudden pain.

The youth screamed just once as the sharp edges cut through his midriff, crunched through solid bone. The body was cut in half, hung out from the pincer, sprayed thick scarlet fluid in all directions.

David jerked his head away, felt the splattering thick warm liquid sprinkle on him, smelled and tasted its iron flavour, almost threw up. He heard them pulling the body apart, slurping on chunks of flesh, grinding the bones. Fighting again over the remnants. And that one’s for Susan Delphore!

Christ, he should have fled whilst the crabs were busy with their repast, that way he could have had a hundred yards or more start on them. Now it was too late to run, crouched in a muddy creek, the man-eating crustaceans less than ten yards away, the human sacrifice a mere sop to whet their insatiable appetites. They were milling round, restless … ravenous. Looking for more food …

He lay in the mud close to the top of the creek bank, face downwards. They would find him for sure, scent his body odours in the same way that he had smelled those of the petrol bomb assassin a few hours earlier, haul him out of his hiding place, tear him apart …

The ground trembled, he heard their pincers scraping the ground like agricultural ploughs. Back and forth, clicking and hissing. Something touched his leg and he almost cried out.

The pistol was in his hand. One shot, a final gesture of defiance as they pulled him down, cursing them. A shadow fell across him, the creek water splashed, heaved up. Another shadow, another splash. Jesus Christ, they were shambling over his prone body, slithering down the sticky bank, following the watercourse downstream in single file. Leaving. Going back to sea …

One accidental step and they would crush him, break a limb. Discover him. Another one, his coat ripped but he remained unscathed. Unseen.

A glance downwards, seeing the macabre procession, bloodied killers that had overlooked easy prey. He smelled their rancid odour, a mixture of decay and stagnant slime, prayed that they would not look back.

Five minutes. Ten. They had gone! Cautiously he raised himself up. To his left the dawn was streaking the night sky, dispelling the half-darkness of a setting moon, a cold grey light that was suddenly very welcome. And far out on the mudflats were shapes that a casual observer might have mistaken for rounded rocks; except that they moved, grew smaller and still smaller as they shambled out towards the tide, eventually disappearing altogether.

David stood up, looked just once to where the crabs had killed and eaten. In places the grass was stained a dark red, it might have been caused by some mineral in the mud beneath. But you knew it wasn’t because scattered all around were fragments of bloody clothing, lengths of it that had been chewed and spat out by the vile sea creatures. Only a high tide would remove all traces of the carnage.

A slow walk back towards the sea wall, a weary body spottled with blood and caked in thick mud, legs dragging. Exhausted after its brush with death yet the features were grim and determined. Killing’s something you never get out of your system.

David Knight’s thoughts returned to Pete Merrick. On the run, living rough somewhere out here … hundreds of square miles of marsh wilderness.

A few hours’ sleep and the hunt would continue. The crabs were not the only ones whose bloodlust was insatiable. There would be more human sacrifices. It was just a question of who the victims would be.

12

As related in Crabs On The Rampage:

Within a few hours of David Knight’s fortunate escape on the saltmarshes of the Wash, Professor Cliff Davenport had received an alert that a huge party of crabs was infiltrating the estuary at Barmouth on the Welsh coast. He sped by Land-Rover to the Toll Bridge where Colonel Matthews was awaiting him.

As the Land-Rover’s headlights picked out the rickety-looking toll bridge, Cliff could not help but marvel at Matthews’s efficiency. The scene represented a full-scale wartime manoeuvre, tanks lining the road on either side of the wide reed-fringed estuary, helicopters on standby, groups of officers and soldiers watching and waiting.

‘The crabs are coming upriver.’ Matthews had an eager glint in his grey eyes. ‘Eye witness reports state that there is some damage to the viaduct but it’s still intact.’

They’d’ve wrecked it if they could have done. Cliff thought, but they need all their strength and they know it! They have to get somewhere!

It was an hour before the first crabs were seen, a swirling of the current that splayed the muddy brown water back, revealing humped shambling shapes that seemed to have difficulty in moving. Stopping; the river closing back over them, being pushed away again.

‘My God!’ Cliff pointed and in the wan light of a summer’s dawn the watchers saw the crustaceans breaking for the banks, struggling with the thick sucking mud. Floundering.

‘They’re coming ashore!’

Heavy concentrated fire shattered the silence, the mudbanks seemed to erupt into a thick brown fountain, craters that filled with water instantly, the crabs squelching like stranded hippos.

Cliff Davenport watched through his binoculars, shouted to Matthews by his side, trying to make himself heard above the incessant bombardment from the tanks. ‘They can't make it! They’re not like they were before, no organisation. Just blind instinct. Look, they’re retreating, going back into the water!’

The crustaceans’ movements were slow, clumsy. A retreat that left half-a-dozen huge sandy shapes immobile on the rutted torn mud. The rest wallowed in the river, spurned the chance to head back to the bay, rapidly submerging until only the churning surface marked their passage. The toll bridge shuddered, timbers creaked, but it remained firm.

‘Tremendous!’ Cliff lowered his glasses, the stench of gunfire sweet in his nostrils. ‘How far they’ll get is anybody’s guess but I don’t reckon they’ll come ashore again. Not that bunch, anyway. About three-quarters of a mile further up the river divides. Try and stop ’em from getting into Dolgellau, Colonel. If we can send ’em north up towards Coed-y-Brenin the river’s narrow and shallow there and we can blast hell out of ’em. First, though, I want a good look at those crab corpses out on the mud. I’ve got to examine them, check on their condition, see how far advanced their cancer is.’

It was a sticky but not unduly dangerous walk out to the nearest dead crab. Cliff sank in above his ankles, once lost his balance, but muddy wet clothes did not deter him. His old eagerness, the scent of victory, spurred him on ahead of the three soldiers following him.

It was big. Huge. An armoured mud-splattered invincible mound of hate that reeked of rotting evil. The stench caught his throat, had him heaving. He approached it from the rear, saw the scored and chipped shell, moved round, trying to hold his breath. Christ, the smell!

The face was the most horrible aspect of all, wizened and gnome-like with pouted lips, eyes closed; at least he didn’t have to look at the eyes! All smeared with blood and pus, thick rivulets that still trickled and dripped.

Then without warning the eyes flickered open! It could have been a trapped nerve suddenly springing free. But it wasn’t. Those orbs saw, narrowed, blazed their hate. Antennae stiffened and the monstrous pincers lifted and clicked menacingly.

Cliff Davenport reacted slowly. Too slowly. Shock and tiredness had numbed his reflexes. His brain said, it can’t be! Several seconds later he knew that it was, that the crab still lived and in the time left to it it was determined to kill!

A claw came at him, opening. With a tremendous mental effort he broke free of the paralytic trance, turned to flee. But his legs refused to move, stuck firmly in the gurgling mud, threatened to overbalance him. He swayed, felt the pincer brush against his shirt tearing off a strip of nylon, a rush of cold morning air flooding his torso. He shuddered, his spine prickled right up into his scalp.

A loud sucking noise as the crab began to extricate itself from this tidal quagmire, hissing its hate, spraying thick yellow-green matter into the air. Some of it hit him in the face, seemed to burn his flesh.

Desperation, tearing at the mud with his feet, feeling them come clear of his short rubber boots, coming out with a rush, throwing him backwards. He was falling, twisting, hitting the soft surface face downwards, a smothering thick brown morass plastering his features. Unable to breathe or see he fought again, almost cried his despair aloud as his feet began to sink once more.

A world of darkness, pawing at his eyes, staggering forward and going in up above his ankles.

Click-click! Deafening, the pincer snapping within inches of his ear. And then the sudden excruciating pain, the grip on his wrist, feeling bone snap, starting to faint and knowing he’d never make it back to safety.

The sloppy stinking mud hit his face and instinctively he jerked his head round, gasping for breath. A red and brown haze hovered before his eyes. One last effort, scrabbling at the mud, trying to push himself free; then the terrible realisation. He had no fingers, no left hand!

That was when Professor Clifford Davenport finally gave up, lay there face downwards hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness, unable to collate his thoughts, not even crying out when a crushing weight rammed his legs down into the soft mudbank.

Everything going black, Noises that he only recognised dimly. Voices. A shot. People moving about.

Then everything went black and stayed that way.

‘They’re dying in their hundreds.’ There was a note of triumph in Cliff Davenport’s voice as he sat up in his bed and greeted Pat as she walked into the small private ward of the Wrexham hospital.

‘And you’re lucky you’re not dead.’ Her features were tear-stained, her eyes black-rimmed because she had not slept for thirty-six hours. ‘The crabs have left me with a cripple for a husband. D’you call that beating them?’

‘It’s not that bad,’ he smiled. ‘My broken legs will mend even if it does mean a month or two hobbling around on crutches. Mercifully it’s not my right hand that’s gone. I’ll soon get used to coping with an artificial one.’

She sat down on the chair by his bedside and for a time she could not trust herself to speak. Finally she said, ‘It’s all over, isn’t it? The crabs are finished, there won’t be any more … will there?’

‘I don’t know.’ He wanted to say the crabs were finished for good but Pat was the one person he couldn’t lie to.

The old houseboat had been down on the marsh for over a decade, a tarred and timbered unwieldy craft some twenty feet in length, seemingly top heavy now that it leaned sideways in the mud of a wide, deep creek. Dilapidated, it still floated on a high tide, pulled at its frayed moorings, but it was doubtful if it would survive another winter.

Its ownership was uncertain. It had been built in the early seventies by old Tom Roade, a wildfowling guide of the old school who used it to rest his clients up for an hour or two during an all-night moonlight shooting foray. Tom had died in 1976 and his widow had moved back to her family in Birmingham. She had not even troubled to collect the scanty items of furniture out of the boat. So it had remained there in the big creek, used by locals and visiting shooters alike. Nobody was interested in maintaining it, just using it. Vandals had stoned it and smashed the single window. But it was still shelter if you were hardy enough.

Christine shivered, not just from the cold breeze wafting in through the broken window on to her naked, handcuffed and manacled body but from the mounting fear inside her. Pete had been gone a long time now, she had no means of checking how long but it was sure to be three hours. It was dark and cold and she feared for her life.

He left eye was puffed and purple where he’d hit her. Pete had been in a smouldering rage, had taken it out on her. He always hurt her in their bizarre games but never like this. Her bare buttocks were aflame with scarlet weals where he had lashed her mercilessly with the riding crop. She had screamed at him to stop but she knew he would not, he only stopped when he was ready, when he had had enough. A bearded giant slavering at the mouth, blaspheming. Flogging her.

‘The fool,’ he had roared, ‘the fucking idiot. He couldn’t even throw a petrol bomb. Knight’s got him but he hasn’t handed him over to the police. He’s done what we would have done, sacrificed Billy to the crabs. How dare he! It isn’t his place to make sacrifices, it’s ours!’ Fear and terror lest somehow this strange adversary was making blood pacts with the creatures from the deep, wresting power from the Group. From himself.

That was when they had left the bedsit, flitted out just after dawn had broken on another summer day. The houseboat was a temporary hideout. Had Billy been in the hands of the police Pete would have sought a hideaway elsewhere for if the law really wanted them then it was only a process of logical searches which would lead them here. But Billy was dead, Merrick was sure of that, and for the moment the old houseboat would suffice. It was not the police he feared, it was this latest enemy, a man who would kill them as ruthlessly as they would kill him.

‘They must have another sacrifice before the full moon wanes,’ Merrick’s eyes filmed, stared fixedly at Christine and she had trembled. ‘From us. Knight if possible or somebody else if I cannot find him. You will remain here until I return.’

Naked, she had submitted to her lover’s sadistic pleasures. And now she lay here manacled to the bench which served as a bed, knowing that out on the marshes there would be death again tonight. Carnage.

With Billy dead it was only a matter of time before one of the frightened Group went to the police. They had not met for over a week now, fearfully awaiting a summons from their terrible messiah. If any of them grassed then they implicated themselves; it was all a question of which was preferable – a prison sentence or the prospect of a bizarre death at the hands of Pete Merrick.

As she lay there Christine contemplated giving herself up. She would probably get life, twenty years from now she could be fighting a futile battle in an attempt to secure a parole. ‘This wicked woman must remain behind bars for the rest of her life.’ The media would dig up the grisly killings over and over again. Pete would probably go to Broadmoor. If they took him alive.

Her skin goose pimpled, smarted, ached. She half-thought that one of her ribs might be broken. No, it was probably only bruised. He had put the boot in viciously. But she didn’t hate him for it. She had hurt him many times when he was bound and helpless at her mercy, but never maliciously.

Even now she could not bring herself to shop him. Once they had known good times then something had happed to change him. It wasn’t his fault.

It had all begun the night of the fight at the disco. A bunch of yobs had arrived shortly after the pubs had closed. The doorman had tried to keep them out and had ended up with a broken arm. A bouncer received a cracked skull from an empty bottle and then all hell had broken loose. Everybody was screaming, trying to get away from the intruders but this bunch were bent on trouble. One of them guarded the door with a length of chain whilst the rest created mayhem.

And that was when Christine had first seen Pete Merrick go berserk.

Looking back, those thugs had been easy meat for somebody of Pete’s unarmed combat skills. It wasn’t what he did to them, it was the way he did it that had Christine’s skin goose pimpling even now. The first to go was the guy with the iron bar; one second Pete was walking towards him, the next he was airborne. A devastating kung fu type kick split the other’s face apart, hurled him to the ground. It reminded Christine of the time she had dropped an egg on the floor, the shell cracked and broken, yoke oozing out of every fracture. Only it had been blood and bone and splinters of teeth.

She would never get Pete Merrick’s expression out of her mind if she lived to be a hundred. The features were a contorted unrecognisable mask of animal rage, the ultimate in evil. The killing look. He moved on to another of the attackers.

Three of them came at him. He dived beneath their flailing fists, caught one of them in the groin; not a blow, more of a crushing squeeze. He shrieked and rolled on the floor clutching himself, screaming insanely. Another was upended, the impact of his skull hitting the block floor was like a pistol report. The third turned to flee and Pete took him from behind, another of those airborne kicks that took the yob full in the back. He didn’t fall forward, sort of twisted backwards and went down yelling.

The one with the bicycle chain thought he could finish Pete without any trouble. The chain snaked out, Pete ducked, caught it as it came over his head and wrested it from his attacker’s grasp. Then he used it! Oh Jesus, it was terrible to watch, a 16-stone man being whipped mercilessly, the flesh raked from him in ribbons. And Pete didn’t let up until the screaming stopped.

When the police arrived ten minutes later it was all over. Merrick had piled the attackers into a bloody heap in the corner. One died in hospital, two more would be in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. The others might be mobile again in a few months, if they were lucky. Certainly they would always bear the scars of that night as a grim reminder of that kill-crazy fiend who had mutilated and killed single-handed.

From that night onwards Pete was changed. He was obsessed with violence and pain and normal sexual relationships seemed to interest him no longer. He took a delight in inflicting pain on Christine, made her sit naked for hours in some uncomfortable position. Sometimes he turned her on but he never fulfilled her desires.

But it had not stopped her loving him. The complete man, a kind of super being, a physique that girls fantasised about. She had all that but she didn’t know how much longer she could go on. But whatever, she would not shop him to the police.

Pete had not expected to find Knight at the flat, indeed he would have been surprised had he done so. But there was no time to waste, the crabs were demanding another sacrifice, the small dead one which was now in a place of prominence on the houseboat table had told him so. And as David Knight was not readily available it had to be Jack Fosdyke. Disappointing but not the end of the world.

Jack Fosdyke was lean, stoop-shouldered and in his early seventies. Balding, he always wore threadbare grey rolled-neck sweaters, summer and winter, a stubby blackened pipe a permanent fixture in the side of his mouth; he either spoke round it or through it, saliva dribbling all the time.

Many years ago his name had been Foster but he had changed it to Fosdyke because he considered himself an integral part of Fosdyke marsh. The change was not done by deed poll, rather by a gradual process, an insistence on his part. ‘Fosdyke, not Foster,’ he grunted at any that used his former name, and in the end it saved an awful lot of trouble to accept his eccentricity. Today few remembered that his name had once been Foster. The old breed of professional whelkers and fowlers had virtually died out, Jack had lingered on; was holding on grimly.

His old gun-punt was scarcely seaworthy. Innumerable leaks had been patched up, the woodwork would surely not take another coating of gas tar, yet he still used it. The swivel gun’s barrel was now wafer-thin but miraculously it still stood Jack’s handful of BB shot and a liberal charge of black powder stoked up with the bent and twisted ramrod. It bucked and roared when the lanyard was pulled, threw out a villainous cloud of thick sulphurous smoke and was still deadly at a range of seventy yards.

Jack had related his best shot of all so many times that he remembered the incident more from the constant telling than from the shot itself way back in January 1947 when the mudflats were frozen solid. It was off Gedney Drove End on the night of the 27th, he had sculled up an ice-bound creek until he got within range of a big raft of fowl sheltering from the elements.

The punt was iced up, his fingers were so numb that he could scarcely grip the lanyard. Now! He slapped the deck with his right hand, a loud thwack that had the birds jumping, pulled with his left. The recoil was such that it threw the craft back into the bank and he had to use the pole to extricate it from the frozen mud. ‘’Er sprung a leak too but t’weren’t bad enough to sink we afore we got home.’

The pall of powder smoke hung in the still freezing atmosphere and was only just dispersing by the time Jack had freed his punt from the ice. There were feathered corpses everywhere, mostly wigeon, a few teal, three Brent geese. Some wounded birds had fluttered up on to the ice and Jack reached in the bottom for his rusty old ‘cripple-stopper’, an ancient single-barrelled hammer gun. The marshes echoed with the reports as he began picking off the wounded. Then he began the task of gathering in the spoils.

The bag of a lifetime, the punt was low in the water when finally he dragged it up on to the frosted saltings of Fosdyke marsh. He overcame the problem of transporting his kill home by tying bunches around his neck (the string snapped twice under the strain on the half-mile trek back to his cottage), hung them on the barrel of the hammer gun and carried them across his shoulders. By the time he got home the sweat had soaked his shirt through and he had to stand outside in the freezing night air to cool off. And then came the count (the figures had varied over the last forty years) but he reckoned it was ‘somewhere about right but I wished I’d writ it down’. There were 42 wigeon, 8 teal, 6 mallard, 2 tufted duck, 3 Brent geese and a curlew ‘which hap to be flyin’ by at the time’.

That night marked the end of a golden era on the Wash; Jack’s eyes misted up as he concluded his tale. ‘Then came the cowboys from all over and the birds got wary, took off for quieter places and nowadays you’m lucky to get half a dozen reasonable shots in a season.’

He’d done with whelking three seasons ago since his wife had died; it wasn’t sport and there wasn’t much money in it. His pension would see him through the time he had left. But when he could not go afloat any longer after the fowl then he didn’t want to be around.

There were damn funny things happening on the marshes these days, though, a sure sign of the times. These big crabs, they reckoned they were something to do with radiation from nuclear experiments. Jack didn’t understand the finer details but it figured. You get messing about with Nature and there was no knowing where it would all end. The end of the world, probably.

He fancied trying a shot at one of the devils with the big gun though. The crabs wouldn’t like that, a 1¾-inch bore firing 20 ounces of shot, by Christ it’d rake ’em! They’d turn tail and scamper as hard as they could back to the water.

A lot of the stories were exaggerated no doubt, just as he had ‘stretched’ a few of his own over the years. The crabs would be gone by the autumn anyway; if they didn’t die from this disease they were supposed to have then the cold would kill them. Crabs didn’t like the cold.

But other events recently were more worrying. Somebody had murdered Wally Orme last winter and that couldn’t have been anything to do with the crabs. And that Scots fellow had gone missing at sea; he should have stayed up north, the Wash was a dangerous place unless you’d been born and bred here and knew every inch of it. Other deaths, the papers were talking about ‘sacrifices’. Bah, sensationalism! Anything for a quick copper or two. Nevertheless there had been killings and it was getting very worrying. All the same Jack Fosdyke wasn’t going to start locking his door at night. No sir, he’d never locked it in seventy years and he wasn’t going to start now for crabs or anybody.

All the same he started when a knock came on his door shortly after midnight on that balmy summer night. He sat bolt upright on the couch which had been his bed since Ethel’s death, clad in his customary night attire of pants and shirt; in the winter he kept his grey sweater on.

‘Who’s that?’ he called out.

The latch clicked, the door had to be pushed hard to jerk it open; a tall bearded man in a sweatshirt and ragged jeans stepped inside. Piercing eyes that gave you the shivers, you could not hold his gaze.

‘And who are you?’ Jack Fosdyke spoke through an empty pipe, dribbled. ‘D’you know it’s turned midnight.’

Pete Merrick glanced briefly round the untidy living room. A blackened grate with dead ashes and screwed up balls of paper spilling out of it, it probably had not been cleaned out since the occupant discontinued fires in the late spring. A jumble of clothes on both chairs, spread newspapers served as a tablecloth; some tinned foodstuffs and a jar of Robertson’s strawberry jam with the lid off. A stale cloying aroma, old man’s stench.

‘You’re the man who’s shot more fowl than anybody on the Wash since the war?’ A question, the eyes glazed, giving nothing away.

‘That’s right.’ Pride overshadowed unease. ‘Jack Fosdyke’s the name.’ The fact that a visitor had called to ask him about fowling was all right, the time of day or night did not matter. When you were over seventy being remembered was very important. ‘Over the years I’ve shot more fowl with my punt gun than the great Snowden Slights did up in Yorkshire. Yes sir. Have you heard of my best ever night in 1947, the year of the hard winter?’

‘Tell me.’ Merrick’s face was expressionless. He stood there, let the story ramble on.

‘Yes, that was the bag, sir.’ Fosdyke’s empty pipe bobbled up and down. ‘Sixty-two head with one shot. Oh sure, there have been bigger shots round and about but I killed fowl consistently, daily in the season. Made a living at it.’ A toothless mouth smiled.

‘Sixty two head …’ Pete Merrick murmured. ‘That’s an awful lot of dead birds. I was hoping that maybe you’d show me your famous punt. I’ve heard all about it.’

‘A pleasure, sir …’ Fosdyke broke off, ‘but it’s kinda late and dark and …’

‘The moon will be up very soon. I heard you loved to be out under the moon.’

‘Indeed but … tomorrow, sir. Call round tomorrow morning any time after seven and I’ll be delighted to take you down to the old punt.’

‘I think you’re spoofing.’ The bearded lips curled in open contempt. ‘Romancing.’

‘Eh?’

‘Telling lies. I don’t think you even have a punt.’ Fosdyke’s pipe slipped in his mouth, a gnarled hand caught it, removed it. His weather-beaten complexion darkened, his eyes narrowed.

‘Nobody calls Jack Fosdyke a liar,’ he growled.

‘Then show me the punt.’

A moment’s hesitation then the bony legs creaked, swung to the floor. ‘Be damned, no man calls Jack Fosdyke a liar!’ Merrick’s eyes gleamed. Then he fell into step behind the old man, followed him out into the night, a winding course that wove between the maze of creeks and gullies, swished through lush reedbeds. Along the bank of a wide channel, the only sounds their padding footsteps and the steady flow of deep water.

‘There you are, now am I a liar?’

Moored close to the bank, where the big creek widened out into a miniature estuary mouth and met the mudflats of the Wash, Pete Merrick saw the slim craft. So frail it seemed scarcely able to ride the swell, low in the water, submarine-like in appearance without the turret.

‘Well, am I a liar?’ Jack Fosdyke was an angry silhouette against the starlit waterscape. Arms upraised, gesticulating.

‘No, you’re not a liar,’ Pete Merrick replied, ‘but you’re a bloody mass murderer!’

One blow, a chopping sideways movement with the flat of the hand, crumpled the ageing wildfowler to the ground. A grunt of escaping breath and he sprawled on the grass, lay still.

‘Easier than bloody carrying you all this way,’ the other muttered. ‘Now, let’s get you into that punt, you old fool. Prepare for your last sea voyage.’

It took Merrick several minutes to lift the unconscious man aboard the bobbing craft, lie him face downwards with his head and shoulders propped up behind the empty gun fittings. Wrists were lashed to the sides, the paddle thrown overboard, floating swiftly away seawards. The punt threatened to capsize and Pete had to move his human burden slightly to balance it.

Fosdyke was beginning to regain consciousness, moaning, stirring, tugging at his bonds. ‘What’s a-going on?’

‘You’re going to sea, old man.’ An insane laugh as Merrick began unravelling the knotted mooring rope. ‘Just like you’ve done for years only this tim e you’re the prey. Somewhere out there the crabs are waiting for you. They know you’re coming, all right, I can promise you that.’

‘Stop. No, please! You can’t do this.’ Fosdyke’s features were a wrinkled mask of sheer terror in the starlight, a white countenance with a toothless cavity for a mouth, eyes rolling in fear.

‘I’ve already done it. You’ll meet the same fate as young Orme, another butcher. And that crazy Scotsman. By daylight there won’t even be a bone left of you. Poor old Fosdyke, the senile fucker put to sea and drowned!’

The punt shot forward, rocked as the current took it, swirled it. Then it was drifting downstream, gathering speed, the old man’s hoarse shots growing fainter by the second.

Pete Merrick stood there, arms uplifted in a double salute to his own gods, the rulers of the oceans and soon to be monarchs of the land. The hour was drawing nigh when Mankind would be overthrown.

The crustaceans had their sacrifice. They would not forget the one who had served them faithfully during this final campaign for supremacy of the world.

13

It was on the return trip across Fosdyke marsh that Pete Merrick came across the dead crab. In the wan starlight any undulation of the ground on such an expanse of flat land was noticeable at once. A hump, a shadow, something that was foreign to this terrain.

He pulled up in amazement, stared. His flesh went cold and his mouth was dry. A huge shape that was unmistakable; he knew without any doubt that it was one of the crabs and that it was dead.

Awe rather than fear, a devout believer of a particular religion suddenly face to face with his god even though that deity was dead. Merrick was still crouched there staring at it when the moon began to show over the North Sea, cast its light on the bizarre scene, glinted on the shell.

The creature was dead all right. Huge ruts in the ground showed where it had clawed its way out of the creek, come ashore to die. Its shell was cracked and splintered, zigzag splits where some missile had struck it, probably one of the heavy guns on the Nene below Sutton Bridge. The protective armour had almost disintegrated and between the cracks the gruesome body was visible. Slimy carrion.

Merrick caught his breath. Christ, it stank; a smell of rotting flesh, a pungent sour cancerous odour. Almost reverently he walked around it, came upon the face. It reminded him of how Jack Fosdyke must have looked in sleep, a shrunken wrinkled countenance, mouth half open, dribbling. A thick string of crustacean phlegm that might congeal, solidify before it touched the ground. Mercifully the eyes were closed.

Somewhere he heard a faint whispering, an inner voice that spoke long-forgotten words in a wicked blasphemy. ‘Take, eat, for this is my body …’

No!

Yes! Holy meat, it had been delivered to him by those he served, cast up in his path. Food from the ocean depths. A last supper to celebrate the coming of the crabs, for surely their hour of triumph was nigh.

Pete Merrick was afraid but he knew what he had to do. The Executioner, its blade still bearing stains from that exhumed corpse’s skull which it had severed a week ago, was a fitting weapon to use on the dead crab. The hilt quivered, vibrated in his hand, as though it, too, was afraid of the might of this crustacean deity. Exposed crab flesh where the shell was broken, stinking meat that had to be hacked. Sliced. He fought against vomiting.

The flesh was surprisingly soft, the knife cutting deep into it, twisting. Carving. A small joint, a steak squelched away from the carcass, slopped into his hand as though it had come alive. Slimy, coated with a kind of mucus. Take, eat, for this is my body.

He stepped back, resisted the urge to run. The crab’s face was only a yard from his own, a shrunken Halloween mask with pouted lips and closed eyes yet Pete had the awful feeling that it might only be asleep.

Backing away in reverence, a minister bowing to the altar. Clutching that chunk of meat, as cold as slippery snow, beginning to numb his fingers. It shall be done, that I promise, this very night. I swear it.

Now there was a quickness to his step, a new urgency as he negotiated the winding creeks, found his way back to Fosdyke. The moon was rising, its cold light chilling his sweaty body. There was no time to be lost, the hour of victory was almost nigh. Very soon the crabs would swarm up out of the sea, an invincible army. Mankind’s last stand a mere show of puny defiance. But the faithful shall be saved.

Christine’s eyes flickered open as he burst into the houseboat, blinked as he lit the oil lamp. She was shivering as though with a fever, her face pallid.

‘We must hurry,’ he breathed as he freed her, ‘before the moon sets.’

‘The police?’

‘No. We need not worry too much about them from now onwards, I think. Any hour, any minute, the world will be overthrown. I have made the sacrifice.’

‘Who?’

‘An old man, Fosdyke the wildfowler. He has been put to sea in his slaying punt to answer for his crimes. Knight was not at home and there was no time to hunt for him. But our gods from the deep have answered our prayers, rewarded us for our loyalty.’

‘How?’ She was rubbing her wrists and ankles. God, they were going to hurt in a minute or two as soon as her circulation began to flow again. She glanced at her clothes lying on the floor, would have reached for them except for the fact that her companion was starting to remove his own garments. Oh Christ, she couldn’t face another session!

‘That!’ he pointed proudly to a stinking lump of what appeared to be decomposing meat which he had placed on their latest altar alongside the small dead crab. ‘The gods have sent us that, further proof that we are the chosen ones.’

‘What … what is it?’ she wrinkled her nose. What appeared to be a slimy raw steak, oozing blood and matter, giving off a nauseating stench.

‘Meat. Holy meat. There is a dead crab on Fosdyke marsh, washed up in my path. A sign. And even as I paid homage to it I heard a voice telling me what I must do.’

‘It stinks,’ she said.

‘Fool!’ Christine was not quick to dodge the back-handed blow. It caught her across the face, threw her back on to the rough boards and she tasted blood in her mouth. ‘Fool, do not insult the holy ones. That is sacred flesh from one of their divine bodies. We must partake of a privileged communion with our masters. The flesh has been sent to us, we must eat it!’

Christine’s stomach rolled, came up into her throat, bile scorching the back of her mouth. She fought against vomiting for if she threw up she knew she could expect no mercy.

‘A communion.’ His clothes were off and she noted with surprise and dismay that he had an erection. ‘Make yourself ready, Chrissie, for only in that way will we be saved in the final hour. Not just served but privileged to serve the world’s new masters.’

She watched with revulsion as he knelt before the ‘altar’, began to carve the rotten crab joint into three junks. One he placed before the long-dead crustacean, the other two portions side by side. A gesture; come and join me before it is too late. Hurry before the moon sets.

Christine crawled forward. Her head was reeling, she might faint at any moment. No, I must not, he will kill me if I do. Oh, you mad bastard, how I wish I had killed you that night when Alan Cryke was murdered. A chance spurned, it would not return.

She wilted beneath his glance, feared lest he had read her thoughts, his eyes had that crazed expression again. The look of death.

Pete Merrick’s arms were outstretched, his lips moved in a weird meaningless incantation. A whispered shriek, he was trembling in every limb, calling upon the ‘Great Ones’ to come and take the world, to take revenge for Men’s cruelty to all creatures. Then switching to the role of priest as though the words came from the crab itself, mimicking that would have been ludicrous in any other situation. Here it was bizarre, ghastly. Terrifying to the trembling girl at his side.

‘Take, eat … for this is my body …’

No! Oh Christ, you can’t eat that. I won’t! Merrick’s jaws were moving, mulching and squashing the mouthful of foul carrion. The stench was overpowering, had her recoiling.

‘Take … eat!’ A command from a full mouth, a finger stabbing at her, swinging round and pointing to that decomposing lump of seafood flesh. Eat or die!

She was going to be sick at any second. Heaving, but she still reached out a hand, fingers that shook and flinched as they neared the bloody meat. She wanted to snatch them away but she dared not. Revulsion as she made contact, the raw flesh slipping from her grasp, sliding. She caught it, it was deathly cold as though it had come direct from a deep freeze.

‘Take … eat!’

She lifted it up, almost dropped it. The smell was a thousand times worse now, a stench of putrefaction and terminal disease. Holding it, her terrified revolted brain panicking, seeking an escape route. Pretend to eat, put it behind you, kick it away. Her churning stomach screamed inside her.

Merrick was watching her too closely as though he guessed, his features a manic mask in the yellowish glow from the old oil lamp. You can’t fool the gods, Chrissie. Nor me.

His lips parted, showed her the inside of his mouth, disgustingly full of partly-chewed raw flesh that weeped yellow pus and blood, overflowed on to his beard, some of it dripping to the floor, splatting thickly. Grinning. A waft of foul breath hit her, a cold stinking gust.

‘Eat, damn you!’

Starting to obey, her cupped hands lifting up the offering. So cold, so heavy. Throw it away. I daren’t. Then you’ll have to eat it.

Her vision was blurring, the cabin darkening, blackness closing in streaked with a web of scarlet veins. Dizzy, a fit of vertigo, swaying from knee to knee, dimly aware that she had pins and needles in her hands and feet. Her stomach was compressing, preparing to eject everything that was inside it.

He was screaming at her, a rush of insane words, had the knife in his hand. Kill me then, the easy way out. The crabmeat was too heavy to hold, she felt it starting to slip from her, made no attempt to catch it this time. Sinking, feeling herself beginning to topple from a dizzy height into a deep black abyss below.

Christine vomited even as she fell, a fountain of spew that sprayed the pseudo altar, jetted on the dead crab, turning it into a plastercast of partially digested canned foodstuffs. Then the blackness took her.

Pete Merrick continued to kneel there, still masticating, holding the knife aloft as though awaiting a command from the unholy creatures he worshipped.

Shall I kill her now? Another sacrifice?

A roaring in his ears but no answer.

Still waiting, rigid. Erect.

No, she must go to the sea, be delivered to them. It was too late now. With dismay he became aware of the cold grey light beginning to infiltrate the houseboat through the single broken window pane. The moon was gone, the night had ended. Another day had begun.

But it would be followed again by night and the full moon would rise once more. Just once more before it began to wane. Surely that would be the long awaited hour and the giant crabs would launch their attack.

And it was fitting that Christine should be sacrificed to them then.

14

David Knight had been out on the marshes since darkness. Clad in dark clothing he crouched amongst some rocks on the muddy tideline, watched and waited. Terrington marsh was deserted except for roosting seabirds.

A long shot, his longest yet. The Wash was a huge area, Merrick and the girl might not be within five miles of here. But you had to keep on hunting, convince yourself you were doing something. David had a hunch that the saltmarshes were going to be the final battleground. The tide was coming in, he would have to retreat soon, pick his way speedily back towards the distant sea wall.

Suddenly something out on the incoming tide attracted his attention, something that bobbed, half submerged; bobbed again. He tensed, felt cold prickles emanating from the base of his spine. An object, low and flat, streamlined. Certainly no crab …

Then he recognised the dark silhouette on the starlit water, knew that it was a gunning punt. Once when he had had the sports shop he had carried out repairs to a punt-gun swivel. He had seen photographs of punts used by the old time wildfowlers and without any doubt this craft was one.

The waves were washing it in, propelling it sideways so that it rocked and threatened to capsize at any moment. And … he stiffened as he saw the low-lying shape in the bottom, the raised hunched head and shoulders. By Christ, there’s a man on board!

He turned, began to walk towards the incoming tide, the mud soft and sticky, pulling at his rubber boots. Squelching, sticking, extricating each foot, cursing. The punt was being washed nearer. Nearer. Ten yards and if the mud didn’t claim him first it would be within reach.

It was a man all right and still alive, the head raised with difficulty.

‘Paddle man, with your hands if you haven’t got a paddle,’ David shouted in desperation all the time scanning the coastline in all directions. A fear, one he did not even want to think about. His priority was to get whoever was in that punt on to dry land before the frail craft capsized. Why the hell didn’t the other make some effort to scull the boat towards the shore?

Seconds later David knew why, saw the way the hands were lashed to the gun fittings. Oh Christ Almighty, this was another sacrificial victim! Pray God he was in time.

‘Hang on, I’ll soon have you.’ He was wading now, the water washing over the tops of his wellington boots, the soles sinking deep, harder to free now. Grunting with exertion, telling himself that he must not panic. Stretching out a hand; the punt bobbed almost within reach then the outgoing swell snatched it away again. Another wave, he had it!

He pulled it close, almost fell headlong on to it. The occupant was an old man, shivering with cold, trying to say something but although his lips moved no sound came.

David held the craft steady with one hand, found his pocket knife with the other. Seconds later the other’s hands were free, useless numbed limbs that flopped on the woodwork. ‘I’m going to have to carry you, old timer.’

‘Don’t … hit me again.’ A hoarse plea, the lined face flooded with terror. ‘Please, not again!’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you.’ He began to pull the craft the last few yards until it beached in the thick mud. ‘I’m not one of them but we can talk about that later.’

David Knight looked round again. There was no movement on either land or sea. They might just be lucky.

Somehow he lifted the man out of the punt, supported him under his arms. Damn this mud, moving with a double weight was going to be decidedly tricky. A step at a time, lugging a dead weight. Somewhere out on that sandbank to his right a flock of gulls were screeching, taking off. Maybe it’s us that have disturbed them, I hope so.

The ground was becoming firmer; almost at the saltmarsh, thank God! And then he heard the sound which he dreaded most, that castanet-like clicking coming from the tide behind them. A glance back, Oh Jesus, there were dozens of the buggers!

The crabs were coming up out of the tideline, an undulating line that was even now merging into a sinister uncanny military formation, a half-moon advance. Fifty yards away, no more, and moving surprisingly fast for their ungainliness. Shambling, scurrying. Clicking.

‘They’ve spotted us.’ David tried not to panic the other. ‘D’you think you can use your legs?’

‘I … I’ll try.’ Jack Fosdyke’s fear lent strength to his feet, staggering to begin with then finding his balance.

David’s instinct was to yell ‘run’ but he knew the other’s speed would be limited. ‘D’you know the way back to the sea wall without wasting time following all these creeks trying to find a crossing place?’

‘Aye.’ Struggling for breath. ‘Head to your left, there’s a wooden footbridge over the wide creek, saves half a mile.’

Click-click- click.

The crabs had reached the edge of the marsh, were scuttling up on to the grass. In the half-light they were immense, their red eyes like scattered glow worms. David tried to increase their pace, an arm around his companion, pulling him along with him. We’ll never make it. We will, we’ve got to.

‘Crabs!’ Fosdyke’s realisation came in a wave of terror, his fingers digging deep into David’s arm.

‘They’re a good way behind us.’ Psuedo reassurance, a lie. The crustaceans had gained a good ten yards on them.

Click-click-clickety-click.

Laboured breathing, he wondered if the old man would make it. He had been through a terrible ordeal, he might suddenly collapse. Christ, I mustn’t think like that.

‘How far to the bridge?’ Not that the bridge is any help, just a catastrophe if we miss it because then we’ll be trapped, gonners for a cert.

‘There … it … is …’

They were almost at the crossing point, four or five heavy railway sleepers placed across the narrowest point in the big channel, nailed together, used by the farmers in the summer months when they grazed stock on the marshes. The water churned beneath it, wide and deep, maybe eight feet across.

The timbers were firm and solid, strong enough to withstand cattle. David looked back again, their pursuers were no more than twenty yards behind them. And still gaining! Their clicking was deafening, an orchestra eagerly tuning up for a symphony of death. He felt the weight of the pistol in his pocket bumping against him, realised the futility of the .410.

He grasped Fosdyke more firmly, attempted to increase their pace, could hear the old fowler’s breath rasping in his lungs.

‘Leave me … laddie … run … save yourself …’

‘No way. If we go, we go together. But they haven’t caught us yet.’ Another fifty yards and they will.

Suddenly the clicking was drowned by a cracking, splintering noise, a snapping of timbers. Heavy crashings, loud splashes.

Fosdyke forced his head round, almost pulled the two of them to a slithering halt on the wet spartina grass, croaked, ‘By Christ, the bridge has collapsed under them!’

It was true. The stout wooden girders were capable of standing a herd of cattle walking across them but several tons of mutant crabs was beyond their strength. The sleepers snapped as one, collapsed inwards, avalanched their load down into the deep swirling creek. A fountain of muddy water erupted as though with the force of a depth charge.

‘It’s got ’em, son!’

‘Don’t kid yourself.’ David dragged the other back into their stumbling flight. ‘It’s only given ’em a ducking but it’ll hold ’em up. Keep going.’

Behind them the crabs were clawing their way out of the deep gutter with some difficulty for part of the loose bank had collapsed with their efforts. The water seethed, foamed into a bubbling lather. Getting in one another’s way as their frenzy reached a peak, fury at this unexpected obstacle. Desperation.

David and Fosdyke had gained ground. Beneath their feet the grass was firmer, drier, and looming up ahead of them like an unending Hadrian’s Wall they saw the sea wall. We’ll make it. Don’t count your chickens, just keep going.

The crabs were coming again, strung out now, their uncanny organisation forgotten in their anger, an unwieldy stampede, the stragglers left behind. And the sea wall would be another obstacle for them.

The two men made it up on to the hard flat road-like surface of the wall, paused to look back. The monsters were still coming but now the odds on a kill had lessened for them.

Jack Fosdyke hung heavy on David, could scarcely breathe, his chest pounding like a trip hammer, ‘I … I’m done … leave me.’

‘Get up on my back.’ The younger man dropped into a crouch, supported himself on all-fours. ‘Quick man. Piggyback or nothing from here on.’

The wildfowler did not argue. Clumsily he mounted his human charge, gripped David round the neck. The latter’s muscles strained, he straightened up, lurched forward. He had to push himself beyond the limits of endurance, a mental as well as a physical mountain to scale. Without his army training it would have been an impossibility, they would both have collapsed on the ground, lain helpless in the face of the pursuing enemy.

Don’t think about it, forget the crabs, your burden, everything. Switch your mind to something else. Anything. Susan Delphore … Grief, anger, a stimulant. The thought of revenge was aflame again, powered his muscles into a last-ditch effort. Merrick would die. Soon. David burned with hatred and knew he would survive, a fuel injection on the last lap enabling him to stagger on.

Almost there. The Fiesta glinted in the soft moonlight, a shining metallic finishing post. Down the incline on the landward side of the sea wall, sliding in places but not falling, a brief respite to his muscles. And somewhere behind David heard crab claws scraping on a hard surface, gathering speed. They, too, were crazed with a desire for revenge.

Still holding Fosdyke he managed somehow to unlock the car doors, bundled his burden into the passenger seat, flung himself in behind the wheel. The engine fired first time, stones and soil flew as the tyres spun. One last look back, euphoric now. Up above on the skyline the crabs were strung out along the big wall in a bizarre crustacean cavalry charge, beginning to spill down the side.

‘They won’t catch us now.’ He eased the car out on to the road, ‘I guess I’d better get you to hospital.’

‘No!’ Insistent, a remarkable recovery now that safety was in sight. ‘I don’t hold with them places, son. Never have and never will. If I’m to die, I’ll die in my own home just as my missus did. Don’t waste your time taking me to hospital because I’ll walk right out again. Fosdyke marsh is the place and Fosdyke’s the name. You can take me there.’

‘All right.’ A sudden smile creased David Knight’s face, relief and admiration for his companion. ‘Just show me the way then over a cup of tea we’ll have a chat.’

‘This guy Merrick has gone to ground.’ David sipped his mug of tea, took stock of his surroundings; Fosdyke was tough, the last of a dying breed. He could be a useful ally. ‘He’s crazy, obsessed with human sacrifice. I have to find him fast or there will be other deaths. I’ve a hunch he’s hiding out on the Wash marshes somewhere but it’s like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. I’m thinking that maybe you can help me, Jack.’

‘Hmm.’ The other stared at the ceiling, wrinkled his forehead, rippled a spreading bruise, ‘there can’t be many places where you could actually live on the marshes. No cover, and even in summer the tides would be a danger. A boat of some kind moored in a creek somewhere … hey, there’s the old houseboat if it hasn’t rotted completely and floated away!’

‘Houseboat?’

‘Aye, belonged to old Tom Roade for many years, and after he died his missus moved away and left it. All and sundry used it after that, the vandals damaged it and it just stayed there and rotted. I’ve not been down that way for many a month. Maybe it’s sunk or been chopped up for firewood.’

‘Can you take me to it?’

‘Oh ay, but we’re not …’

‘Not tonight.’ David gave a reassuring smile. ‘We both need to sleep and I’m certainly not leaving you alone. First thing in the morning will be soon enough. At least we’ll know then if it’s still there and if it is then whether or not anybody’s been living in it.’

‘I’ll take you.’ Jack Fosdyke closed his eyes. ‘Man, I’ll see those crabs in my sleep every night for the rest of my days.’

David’s hand closed over Fosdyke’s arm, pulled him back. Ahead of them, hidden below the banks of the deep creek, tilted to one side with its hull stuck firmly in the muddy quagmire lay the old houseboat. A dilapidated floating shed, a disintegrating wreck.

‘Easy, Jack, from here on I go alone.’ He eased the pistol out of his pocket. It was loaded and there were some spare cartridges in his other hand.

‘You be careful, laddie. That one’s as mad as they come.’ The old man seemed none the worse for his nocturnal adventure, spritely and eager; eager to come to grips with those who had subjected him to such an ordeal.

‘Stay here and keep down.’ Without looking back David Knight began to crawl away, travelling on his stomach, propelling himself with his elbows; cutting back into the reed bed on a wide detour that would eventually bring him out directly above the old floating dwelling.

Every few yards he stopped to listen but there was no sound apart from the distant calling of seabirds. Moving on, only his racing pulses evidence of the tension within him. Had it been an ‘ordinary’ enemy he was stalking, a terrorist sniper or bomber, his equilibrium would not have altered. But uppermost in his mind was Susan, what they had done to her. They would both pay the supreme penalty, the girl as well.

He eased forward gently, peered over the top of the bank and saw that he had not misjudged his stalk. The houseboat was directly below him, its smashed window like a staring evil eye. Seeing him, scowling. Threatening.

He waited, listened again. No sound, it was odds on that the craft was empty. He had to find out and there was only one way to do that. He straightened up, braced himself and leaped all in the same perfectly co-ordinated movement.

David hit the warped deck with a soft thud, sent the door crashing back on its single hinge with a swift blow from a booted foot. Pistol cocked, forefinger taking a first trigger pressure. Then lowering the weapon, a sigh of disappointment escaping his lips because his hunch had been correct. The birds had flown. At least temporarily.

He stood in the cabin doorway, caught his breath. Jesus, what a bloody stink! Somebody had spewed up all over the floor and table, there were two chunks of rapidly putrefying meat on the latter swarming with bluebottles even at this early hour. And a tiny dead crab. Nothing else.

Shitfire and holy fucking Moses, the bastards had been here and now they had gone. Another hunch, a feeling that came at him along with the nauseating stench. Pete Merrick and his girlfriend would not be coming back.

‘Well?’ Jack Fosdyke looked down over the bank. ‘Any luck?’

‘I guess a miss is as good as a mile.’ Suddenly very weary, David climbed back out of the creek, rejoined his companion. ‘They’d rigged up some kind of crab shrine in there and spewed all over it. Then lit out.’

‘Maybe they’re on the run.’ There was a note of relief in Fosdyke’s voice. ‘Running scared, miles away by now.’

‘No, running so that they’ll live to fight another day,’ he replied and added cynically, ‘Or, rather, another night. Merrick won’t stop this madness until he’s caught. Until he’s lying there dead on the marsh. But now we’re really stumped, we don’t have a clue where to look next. I guess tonight’ll be the last night of the moon and one way or another all hell’s going to be let loose.’

15

As soon as dawn broke the tanks began moving in on Sutton Bridge, a rumbling vibrating convoy that lined the banks strategically, their guns trained on the wide tidal river. Infantry, a backup force with automatic rifles and grenades. Police and ambulances at the ready.

And behind them two helicopters fitted with pesticide spraying equipment, their tanks loaded with paraquat weedkiller. The poison had devastated the crabs nearly a decade ago;[iii] It had been used again only a couple of days previously on the Welsh coast.

Grisedale from the Ministry of Defence sat in a long-wheel-base Land-Rover some distance beyond the tanks, grey haired and weary after his flight from Wales. He had not slept in 36 hours and the lines in his face had etched a little deeper when he had received the news of Professor Davenport’s accident. That had hurt like it was his own hand that had been snapped off by a dying crab’s claw. Cliff, the old campaigner right from the beginning, now invalided by his hated foes. It was a cruel blow. But at least the bastards were dying. If they attacked Sutton Bridge then it would be a kamikaze assault. And according to radar reports there was a big crustacean contingent heading up out of the Wash, coming this way. It was all a question of how soon the giant crabs would die. Death might come too late.

‘How long till the tide begins to ebb?’ he asked the dapper colonel at his side.

‘An hour.’ Colonel Markham had his binoculars trained on the swirling current. Just visible above the water line was a line of square steel mesh. ‘If they come they’ll never get past the shark netting. It’ll force ’em up on to the banks. Target practice for our lads.’

‘Don’t you be too sure,’ Grisedale answered. ‘These crabs are totally unpredictable. I’ve been fighting ’em on and off for ten years and they’ve always done the unexpected. But, I suppose, they are in the final stages of cancer. They’re dying and they might just do the obvious.’ Everybody was clutching at straws.

‘We can only wait and see. If they’re in the river when the tide goes out they’ll be sitting ducks.’

Grisedale settled back in his seat and once again his thoughts turned to Cliff Davenport. They owed it to Cliff to blast these behemoths right back to hell but you could not believe that it would ever actually happen.

It was 7.50 a.m. It was going to be another scorching day, a cloudless sky, the sun already beginning to climb. The army watched and waited, police reinforcements had kept the crowds back as far as the Bridge Hotel. Everybody sensed that this was to be the final battle. The crabs had been wiped out elsewhere, these would be the last survivors, a mighty force intent on avenging their comrades. A last throw.

The tide was beginning to ebb, the shark netting strung across the river was clearly visible now. The thick mud banks were becoming exposed as the water level fell.

Then suddenly the taut steel mesh netting began to snap with a series of load reports, catapulting, sending up clouds of brown spray. The water was churning as though a dormant whirlpool below the skeletal remains of the suspension bridge had awoken. A cauldron coming up to the boil.

The river was moving, it seemed, defying tidal laws and washing back up the banks, breakers crashing against the wharf. Then out of the maelstrom came the crabs.

Instant heavy fire from the tanks, a devastating volley that cut into the crab ranks. Shells cracked and splintered, shards flying in all directions. Some of the creatures fell back, rolled over, grotesquely flaying in the mud. Others clambered over the fallen and the horrified watchers sensed their sheer desperation to reach dry land at all cost.

The river rolled back, foamed, parted again. Crabs clawed the soft mud amidst a second hail of fire. Soldiers were attempting to pick off the nearest invaders with automatic rifles, bullets glancing off the armour-plated shells, whining in all directions. Deafening, the wail of police sirens in the background, loudhailers warning the distant crowd to disperse.

People screamed, some fled, others stayed; ghouls who did not want to miss a massacre. This was going to be worth watching, better than any motorway multi-pile up.

Crabs naked because their shells had been ripped asunder by the concentrated fire, repulsive creatures the size of overgrown St Bernard dogs. Bleeding, their wretched bodies a mass of cancerous sores that wept thick fluid. Dying. But not dead yet.

Casualties, writhing, squirming mortally wounded crabs that were stepping stones for the living, still maintaining an awful military-style organisation in their ranks as they ploughed on up the banks.

The vanes on the waiting helicopters were beginning to rotate, the pilots ready for instant take-off. Anticipating the order because the worst had come to the worst. Spray the bastards with paraquat like we did before!

‘We’ll have to send the choppers in.’ Colonel Markham was tight-lipped, pale in spite of his experience of warfare. He remembered the Falklands but that war had been nothing compared with this one. Christ, it was bloody sickening, knotted up your guts. Blood and pus spraying in the air.

‘No.’ Grisedale’s voice was hoarse, he knew that the ultimate responsibility rested with him; finish the crabs and you’re a national hero, fuck it up and the media will flay you for weeks. ‘Not yet, anyway. There’s a stiff breeze blowing off the sea, it’ll drift the spray back inland.’ Not just fields of scorched crops but people with their lungs burning up. Another Bhopal. That would be the price of winning the war with chemicals.

‘We can’t hold ’em.’ Markham’s features were strained. ‘Some of ’em will break inshore in a matter of minutes!’

A crab fell back, pincers kicking in horrific death throes. Another was blasted, half its shell blown away but it continued on its shambling course until it was hit again; stopped in its tracks, you could not tell whether it was dead or alive. Continual gunfire. More crabs were emerging from the tidal river, you sensed their fury, their disregard for pain and death. Man made us like this, destroy him!

Now a crab had scaled the bank, smashed through a wooden barrier. Police were retreating on foot, abandoning their vehicles, yelling into their megaphones in an attempt to disperse the nucleus of the stubborn crowd.

The crab halted as though undecided which way to go. Its gaze focused on an empty red and white police patrol car and it lurched forward. An enemy, its own size, a foe that had to be destroyed. Pincers screeched on metal, buckled the roof, showered glass everywhere. Mighty blows, a living can opener gone berserk, ripping out seats, tearing the vehicle asunder, reducing it to a breaker’s wreck.

A vivid flash from close-by and the monster halted, perhaps wondered why some missile had not struck it. Another flash. It saw the man, a frail press photographer dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, his camera raised again.

The photographer heard police yelling at him to come away, ignored them. One more shot, Christ he’d sell pics like these to every paper in Fleet Street, close-up action shots. Everybody would have photographs of the battle taken from a distance, they’d be two a penny, but nobody had gone in close to get the real goods. He could see every detail of that awful crustacean face, the hate-filled smouldering red eyes, the shrunken mouth dribbling thick pus. The fucker was dying, labouring for breath, any second it would die. Just one more picture, maybe another when it keeled over. Remember the byline folks, Tom Ellison, freelance action photographer.

The flash exploded, dazzled him for a second, and then the crab was bearing down upon him. Too late he realised his folly, turned to flee, clutching his precious camera.

Too late. Five yards, perhaps less. His pursuer lumbered forward, its ungainliness deceptive. A slashing pincer caught his heel, bowled him over, severed his foot. Screaming, lying there looking at his blue sneaker, a stump of ankle protruding from it, amputated with the precision and efficiency of a butcher’s cleaver. Aware that he was spouting blood but there was no pain; seeing his attacker towering over him, that expression now one of gloating. Ellison screamed and then the crab struck.

A downward, devastating, skull-shattering blow that split him roughly in half, head and torso cut down the middle, opening up, jetting blood. A sideways swipe mulched the lower half of his body, rendered him unrecognisable, a heap of bloody mulch lying alongside the wreck of the police car.

The crab crouched there watching. A pincer raised, fell back, sank down until the underside of its shell was scraping on tarmac and loose chippings. The eyes flickered, closed. Slowly the features relaxed and the body inside the shell went limp.

A policeman yelled, ‘It’s dead,’ but nobody was going to be foolish enough to go forward and verify that statement. It could be a trick, a ruse to lure human victims within reach of its slashing claws.

The remnants of the suspension bridge were gone, pulled down into the water as crabs tried to scale the twisted girders. The demolition was complete.

Then, suddenly, the attack seemed to slow. Crabs were still coming up out of the water on to the mudbanks but no further. Shambling, crouching in the mud, just sitting there, stationary targets for the big guns. Disintegration in stages, their shells breaking up to expose their shuddering grotesque cancer-ridden bodies, then blasted to heaps of blood and slime.

‘They’re dying!’ Grisedale shouted to make himself heard above the rolling gunfire. ‘Just as they did in Wales. One big last attack but their strength has given out!’

It was true. The invasion had lost its momentum, bizarre toy monsters with their clockwork springs running down. Movements, but not enough even to enable them to retreat. The dying waiting for death, a spent mutant force.

The battery continued for another hour. The tide ebbed until the river Nene was no more than a muddy channel flowing along a deep canyon.

A hundred crabs, possibly more, were revealed in the bottom of the river. All dead. A mighty backup army that would surely have annihilated Sutton Bridge and beyond. An army that had died on the march.

The helicopters were still and silent; they would not be needed. A cessation of gunfire from the tanks. Everybody just watching, waiting for the tide to flow again and cover the carnage, the mud to bury the slain.

‘Well, I guess that’s that.’ Grisedale smiled weakly at the uniformed colonel sitting beside him in the Land-Rover, drew a hand across his perspiring forehead.

‘We’ve won the day, sir.’

‘No,’ the Ministry man’s smile faded. ‘We haven’t won, Colonel, there was no way that we could have. Nature won it for us. In the end she rebelled at what Mankind had done to one of her species, decided to destroy them. Invincible they were but in the end they couldn’t conquer the disease. I guess there’s a lesson there to be learned but nobody will heed it. It’ll be forgotten, just like Bhopal will conveniently be forgotten except by the survivors. The world is bent on self-destruction. Test your nuclear warheads under the ocean and to hell with ocean life. If your radioactive waste leaks into the sea, so what, it’s got rid of it. Spray your chemicals on the land and what’s it matter if three generations hence a build-up in the body has created some awful human suffering because we’ll be dead and gone by then anyway. That’s what it’s all about, greed and live for today, make money and to hell with tomorrow. But, as I said, they won’t learn. Maybe the crabs are only the beginning.’

Colonel Markham did not reply. It was all beyond his ken.

16

Christine had lain beside Pete Merrick in the dense reed bed throughout the heat of the day. Her bonds had restricted the circulation in her hands and feet until her limbs had finally gone numb. Her naked body ached, she had vomited until there was nothing left inside her stomach but she still smelled and tasted that revolting decomposing crab meat. She wished that she was dead. She was going to die anyway, she just wanted to get it over and done with.

Some hours ago, it seemed days even weeks, they had heard the sounds of battle coming from the direction of Sutton Bridge, incessant heavy fire that had vibrated the marshes like a minor earthquake. Finally it had died away and the silence had returned.

‘They’ve killed the crabs,’ Christine whispered through cracked lips. ‘They’re all dead, I know they are, Pete.’

Merrick whirled round from his crouching position by her side, struck her across the face, brought a whimper from her swollen lips; she had not the energy left to scream, realised the futility of crying out. ‘Fool!’ He leaned across, shook her roughly. ‘Do you imagine that the holy ones can be destroyed? Of course not. The firing has ceased because the guns and the soldiers have been conquered. The crabs have won a decisive battle, have moved on inland. They will demand another sacrifice to celebrate their victory over Man.’

‘Knight?’

He did not reply, just allowed his gaze to rest on his prisoner, her slim sensuous body, the perfectly formed breasts. Yet for him it was no turn-on now, his thoughts had transcended the basics of human relationships. His eyes glazed again, misted. In the end it had to come to this because his gods demanded it.

‘Perhaps Knight as well,’ he muttered.

Christine was cold and shivering in spite of the heat of the day. The ground beneath her was soggy, a dampness that penetrated her flesh, seeped into her bones. This was the end but for God’s sake don’t give me to them. Kill me now if you must.

But he continued to squat there, motionless, absorbed in his own evil thoughts, a brooding statue. Waiting for night to fall.

‘You’re going to kill me,’ she whispered after a while.

‘No. You will be offered up to the ocean gods. Your fate will rest with them.’ His lips parted in a mirthless smile. ‘It is not up to me. They might even decide to spare your life, Chrissie.’

‘I … thought we were in this together.’

‘We are.’ He turned, faced her. ‘God, Chrissie, of course we are. That is why I am giving you the honour of a sacrifice. Believe me, I don’t want to kill you but I cannot go against the will of the holy ones. Last night, after you had refused to eat the sacred meat, they spoke to me. They were angry at your rejection, ordered me to deliver you to them. What else can I do other than obey?’ He spread his hands, shrugged. ‘Having come so far I cannot now be disloyal. It is a difficult decision to make but I have no choice. Perhaps they will spare you. Who knows?’

A sudden surge of hope; the crabs are all dead, wiped out when they launched their final attack. In which case there will not be any to eat me. It was a forlorn hope. She lapsed back into silence. He would kill her anyway.

The day dragged slowly on. Afternoon merged into early evening, the shadows of the tall reeds lengthened. Clouds of midges hovered in the stillness. Several helicopters passed to and fro, and each time Pete Merrick lay prone, his face pressed into the mud until they were gone.

The tide began to fill the creeks with a soft lapping sound, a gentle swirl of water. So peaceful. It’s all over, the crabs are dead.

‘Listen!’ Merrick suddenly stiffened, head cocked to one side. He was trembling visibly, violently.

‘What is it?’ Christine felt cold fear clutching at her heart.

He did not reply, continued listening. A far-off click like the cocking of a pistol. It came again. And again. Nearer.

Pete slowly raised himself up until his head was clear of the thick rushes, shaded his eyes from the glare of the evening sun. A green plain stretching right back to the sea wall almost a mile away, a maze of creeks, patches of reeds standing out starkly.

He let out his breath slowly, every muscle in his body rigid. There was no mistaking those shapes, those huge rounded outlines, the way they moved. He counted them. Five. Coming this way … as though they knew. Their clicking was louder now. Crabs!

‘The great ones are here.’ He spoke without turning his head. ‘They know, and I must have the sacrifice ready for them. They have come just as they promised me last night.’

Christine tried to speak but could not, shook with terror. Pete, please, no! We must flee before it is too late. But even as he released her from her bonds she knew that escape for her was an impossibility. She tried to crawl but her numbed arms would not bear her weight, threw her back down to the ground. Sobbing, lying at the feet of the man whose slave she had been for so long, hating him as he rolled her over on to her back with his foot, contemptuously kicked her legs wide. Gloating, but his obsession with the crabs was stronger than his lust for his mate.

‘You must go to them unfettered and willing, my beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘And as you cannot go yourself then I must take you. It is an honour for both of us.’

He bent down, grasped her, lifted her up with surprising ease. A limp weight, her only struggles mental ones. Turning, looking for the crabs again. They were about a hundred yards away, still advancing but oh, so slowly, their pincers being used in the manner of crutches to support bodies that were suddenly too heavy and cumbersome for their owners. Crawling, clicking like a metronome that had almost run down.

Merrick forced his way out of the reeds carrying his human burden, stood there on the open grass. I am your humble servant and I have obeyed. The one you desire is here, ready for you to do with as you please.

The crabs quickened their pace for a yard or two then slowed down again, a sideways slow-motion gait that was a supreme effort. Once they stopped, regarded the humans balefully, came on once more. Pete noted the chipped shells, one split diagonally so that even at this distance the body beneath it was visible, slimy bloodied flesh.

Reverently he stooped down and lowered the girl on to the soft grass, placed her arms by her sides, her feet together. Go to them with dignity, my love. You rejected their flesh, they will not spurn yours. Take, eat …

The crabs had halted yet again, clustered. Fifteen yards away, no more. He could make out their faces, reminded him of wizened garden gnomes, exaggerated caricatures. Their eyes smouldered but their facial expressions were of excruciating pain, the mouths agape to emit dribbles of mucus.

Christine lay there not moving, eyes closed, and for one moment Pete thought that she had died. That would have been the final insult to those who hungered for her flesh and blood. He drove his bare foot into her ribs, brought a gasp of pain from her swollen lips, jerked her eyes open like those of a sleeping doll that is suddenly tilted upright.

‘Do not close your eyes. Watch, look upon our masters.’ His foot went out again, pushed her head over to one side so that it faced the oncoming crustaceans.

They moved again and this time Christine screamed.

David Knight had left Jack Fosdyke’s cottage shortly after daybreak. The old man would be all right, nothing that a few days’ rest would not put right. In the meantime David had to find Merrick; every hour that the madman remained at large meant that human life was at risk. He was out here on the marshes somewhere, lying low with the girl, David was sure of that, a crazed self-appointed messiah awaiting the big crab invasion of the mainland, prepared to sacrifice victim after victim. Another Manson, a Jim Jones deserted by his frightened sect, determined to kill and kill again, an obsession that had outgrown itself like the crabs and their disease.

There was only one way to find Merrick. Move cautiously across the saltmarshes, maintain a constant vigil with binoculars, watch for any sign that might give the other away. Maybe a scattering of birdlife, ducks veering from their course because their sharp eyes had spotted Man lurking in the reeds or creeks. Anything.

And Knight also knew that he had to be on the lookout for crabs; they might not all be dead.

Then in the distance he heard the sounds of battle, knew that the attack on Sutton Bridge, the bastion of the Nene, had begun. Rolling reverberating gunfire, explosions that shook the ground. Incessant rifle fire crackling in amidst the reports of the heavy guns. Oh Christ, either the crabs were taking a pasting or else the river defences were fighting to the last man.

Eventually the firing became spasmodic, died away. And the silence rolled softly back.

David fought against his craving for a cigarette. A wisp of smoke, the aroma of tobacco in the breeze could give his position away. Keep still and watch, move on again in an hour if nothing happens. Maybe he was the best decoy of all; it was an uneasy thought and he wondered if the fugitive was armed.

Shortly after midday he crawled into a thick reed bed, was grateful for the shade. He began to get a feeling that he was wasting his time, that he was the only one out here on the marshes. Merrick could have moved inland, finally fled. When the sun began to dip down in the western sky David was even more convinced that that was what had happened. The crazy bastard had finally had enough sense to flee, had maybe gone upriver to await the coming of his gods. Give it another hour. For Susan Delphore’s sake.

And then he spotted the crabs. Five of them, heading seawards, visible on the mudbanks of a deep creek. And God, they were sick!

He grimaced as he studied them through his binoculars. The very way they crouched on the grass was evidence enough of their condition. Had they not been squat in shape they would have swayed, keeled over. Two were wounded, jagged holes in their shells where they had been struck by heavy artillery. Their horrible features were made even more horrendous by clusters of bulging growths, cancers that oozed thick fluid, seemed ready to burst.

The last survivors, David decided. The crabs have had one helluva hammering, been routed, and these fellers are trying to make it back to the sea. To die.

Witnessing their suffering but feeling no vestige of pity. Hatred, certainly, for the crabs had killed Susan even though Pete Merrick was responsible for her death.

A movement fifty yards or so to his right interrupted his smouldering thoughts. The reeds parted and a man emerged cradling a woman to his chest, both of them naked. Walking forward, it might have been a film set from some Edgar Rice Burroughs film, Tarzan carrying an unconscious Jane, wild beasts only a short distance away. Shouting something; the crabs had spotted them, began to lumber forward.

And even as David was about to yell a warning he realised that his search was over. Here were the couple he had been hunting for days, holed up in the reeds only a gunshot away from himself for the past hour.

You crazy fool, the crabs will tear you to pieces! David knelt there, pistol in hand, bemused, for once undecided upon a course of action. Merrick had set the girl down, retreated a few yards, stood watching; shouted something to the crabs which seemed to spur their diseased bodies to a final effort. The blood run, a sideways gambol that was in itself a reflection of their mutant make-up, hungering for human flesh even in the final stages of their own death.

Knight was on his feet, the .410 raised, sighted on the head of the madman. Too far to kill him but it would have tumbled him, had him writhing on the ground, easy blood-spattered prey for the crustaceans. A sacrifice. But the ex-SAS man did not take a trigger pressure, became an eager spectator. A voyeur.

Christine screamed just once as the crabs fell upon her. Claws flailed, slashed and tore in a frenzied mutilation that severed the head and an arm. A rabbit gutted, entrails spewing out; held aloft by the crab which appeared to be their leader yet had lost its authority, the others fighting it for its prey, ripping viciously. Blood sprayed, mottled the sandy-coloured shells. Each one had a portion, pulling to snap clinging sinews, then casting the spoils aside, littering the ground with the shredded corpse.

The bastards aren’t eating her. Because they’re not hungry. They’re too sick to eat but they’ll kill right up to the bitter end!

Suddenly Merrick saw him, turned to stare. Bearded features that were no longer human, the face of a beast that had joined other wild beasts for a bloody final repast. Snarling, lips frothing with spittle, jabbering incoherently until finally his manic brain found the means to communicate with a human being.

‘Knight, welcome to the sacrifice. You have already seen how the gods devour a mortal. Your turn is next.’

‘I could kill you here and now.’ David held his weapon at hip level. ‘And believe me nothing would give me greater pleasure. But I’m not going to because the crabs will do my dirty work for me. But, Christ, how I want to watch this! And remember, when they’re shredding you, how Susan Delphore felt, what she went through. Because that will be uppermost in my mind. God, I’m going to enjoy every second!’

‘I’ve a score to settle with you, Knight.’ Pete Merrick’s eyes blazed. ‘Sure, the crabs will do it for me but it’s kinda personal. They’ll have what’s left of you.’

Merrick began to walk forward and David Knight hesitated. He could have shot the other, no problem. Logically it was what he ought to do. And yet his finger came off the trigger and he lowered the pistol, dropped it back into his pocket. As Merrick had so rightly said, this was a personal issue. He had a reason for wanting to take this maniac with his bare hands – Susan Delphore! David felt his pulse start to quicken. God, he’d take the bastard apart!

Merrick had the sword in his hand, the moonlight glinting evilly on the curved blade. Steel as cold as death, thirsting for more blood. He dropped into a crouch, waited. Come on, feller, I’m gonna gut you!

David’s hand rested on the butt of the pistol in his pocket. Again he was tempted. No, he had to do it his way, SAS-style unarmed combat against the threat of deadly kung fu fighting. And the sword known as the Executioner.

No more than a yard separated them now, both men anticipating a move from the other. Knight waited; draw your enemy, he’ll have to do something soon.

The sword blade came up from hip level, a sudden thrust. Quick as it was, Knight was faster, swayed back on his heels, the mud helping him to maintain his balance, jerking his hips to one side. He felt the blade brush his clothing, heard a muttered curse from his adversary. And then David had the sword, clamped his hand down on the outstretched arm and with a deft flick sent the weapon spinning from Merrick’s grasp. The Executioner thudded into the mud, stood upright, quivering.

‘Damn you, Knight!’ A bestial snarl.

David laughed, positioned himself between Merrick and the sword. Now it was unarmed combat, the way he wanted it.

Again the mud was to Knight’s advantage; it slowed that bone-crushing kick by a fraction of a second, the foot catching him on the thigh but it was only a glancing blow. He grabbed fast, got the ankle. Twisted and pulled sharply upwards, pushed down. Heard the bone crack.

Merrick gave a scream, fell headlong in the mud. He tried to get up but his broken ankle would not bear his weight. And in that same second David Knight struck, a sideways chopping blow, felt the heel of his hand thud on solid bone.

Merrick’s face seemed to explode. The evil features were awash with blood, a waxen Halloween mask with a torn tongue protruding; gurgling, spewing blood; the defeated warrior a wretched broken unrecognisable being.

David Knight drew back his foot, would have put the boot in and finished his fallen foe. Only then did he remember the crabs, hesitated. And saw them.

They were heading this way. They had lost interest in the girl, scented fresh blood and their instinct was to kill even though their hunger had deserted them. Bunching, charging, pincers clicking madly.

Click-click-clickety-click.

David Knight turned, began to run. His revenge was complete, he had settled his score with Merrick and left him for the crabs. Now he had to save himself. Running, leaping across narrow creeks, falling and picking himself up. Only when he had covered fifty yards did he turn and look behind him, could not help shuddering at that which he saw. The crabs had found Merrick, were fighting amongst themselves over the spoils.

Then Pete Merrick was airborne, a naked rag puppet catapulting in the air, his curses escalating into a throaty scream. Below him the crabs waited, macabre fielders about to take a catch, clustering and clicking. Grabbing.

David Knight had one final glimpse of that insane face before it disappeared from view. Rage and pain, total disbelief, a master of foxhounds thrown from his mount yet still urging the pack on. Demanding a kill, insanity refusing to yield to logic. Still believing in his ocean gods even when the devilish deities began dismembering him.

David stood and watched, sickened but telling himself that he had to see it out right to the very end. He must witness the carnage, glean something from it, quench the fire of revenge which was threatening to burn him up in the same way that the cancer had finally eaten the crabs away.

He remembered Alan Cryke, how Merrick had tied the youth to the bridge. Others who had disappeared. And Susan Delphore. This was how it had been with her, the pain and the terror, the utter degradation of being reduced to crustacean food.

But the crabs weren’t eating Merrick. They had quartered his body, tossed limbs in all directions, trampled the strewn flesh and bones. And then come to rest, a game of statues or musical chairs, the music suddenly switched off. Sinking down, resting on their shells in the midst of the carnage. Spent.

David Knight just stood there, a man busy getting an awful lot out of his system, waiting for the grief and the hate to evaporate. He felt the agony, the awful fate of an innocent girl and blamed himself. Hated the man who had assumed an evil priestly role in cult worship, savoured his self-destruction. Regretted that Merrick was beyond pain and tried to convince himself that there was a hell where eternal fire raged but did not consume. And finally walked away.

David Knight did not look back. If the crabs were not already dead then their death was imminent. They would not pursue him. He had all the time in the world to follow the twisting creeks, find crossing places. Time in which to come to terms with himself, remember what had gone before and try to figure out how to forget it.

It was almost dark when he reached the sea wall and began to scale the steep incline.

Only once did he glance back seawards, a momentary turning of his head, just enough time to see a massive expanse of marshland with a glistening silhouette of tideline in the distance. And nothing else.

The crabs and their crazy cult-worshippers were dead and gone. It was all over. He was free to walk away from here and remember a lovely young girl as she had once been before all this began.

[i] See Night of the Crabs

[ii] See The Origin of the Crabs

[iii] See Night of the Crabs

The End

Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
I hope you enjoyed the read!.
Guy.

This ebook is the forty-fifthh book to be published as part of a project to convert Guy's entire back catalogue to ebook format. Beginning July 2010 it is expected to have all books available by the end of 2012.

The list of books so far published is :

1. Werewolf by Moonlight.

2. The Sucking Pit.

3. The Slime Beast.

4. Night of the Crabs.

5. The Truckers 1 - The Black Knights.

6. The Truckers 2 - Hi-Jack!.

7. Return of the Werewolf.

8. Bamboo Guerillas.

9. Killer Crabs.

10. Bats Out of Hell.

11. The Son of the Werewolf.

12. Locusts.

13. The Origin of the Crabs.

14. Caracal.

15. Thirst.

16. Deathbell.

17. Satan's Snowdrop.

18. Doomflight.

19. Warhead.

20. Manitou Doll.

21. Wolfcurse.

22. Crabs On The Rampage.

23. The Pluto Pact.

24. Entombed.

25. The Lurkers.

26. Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures.

27. Sabat 2: The Blood Merchants.

28. Sabat 3: Cannibal Cult.

29. Blood Circuit.

30. Accursed.

31. Sabat 4: The Druid Connection.

32. The Undead.

33. Crabs' Moon.

34. The Walking Dead.

35. Throwback.

36. The Wood.

37. The Neophyte.

38. Abomination.

39. Snakes.

40. Cannibals.

41. Alligators.

42. Bloodshow.

43. Thirst II: The Plague.

44. Demons.

45. Crabs: The Human Sacrifice.

The next book will be :

46. Fiend.

"The slowly decaying corpse lay on the bed in the Kremlin. The icy silence of a news blackout lending a chilling unreality to an occasion of monumental significance. For the Russian leader is dead. A shape, blacker than the shadows; a thing that smelled of putrefacation and emanated a coldness beyond the iciness of the Siberian wastes. Lips screwed into a bestial snarl, eyes sunken and staring. Suddenly his powerful chest is heaving, drawing in breath and expelling it noisily, learning to breathe again. Learning to live again."

To view all ebooks currently available, including the one above, please follow the link below.
View Ebook Catalogue

Best regards,

Guy and all at Black Hill Books.