Locusts
Author: Guy N. Smith
Date: 1979-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Alan Alton and family move into the Shropshire hills to run a smallholding. One item that they take with them is completely forgotten in the hassle, namely a crate of peaches sent by an American relative, which also happens to contain a few Pennsylvanian locusts. Joining these are more locusts which flew north into the country due to the prolonged heatwave. Soon these few reproduce into many, into huge swarms which start devouring whatever they can find, and Britain wakes up to a state of emergency.
Publisher: Hamlyn

Locusts - Kindle Version 1.0

(c) Guy N Smith 1979 - 2010

Published by Black Hill Books, December 2010

ISBN : 978-1-907846-113

First Published by Hamlyn January 1979.

Converted to Ebook from original paperback by Scan2Ebook.com

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Contents

Title

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eightten

The End

Chapter 1

‘I think it's a pigsty,’ Sheila Alton spoke with a mix of disgust and indignation in her voice. ‘Nothing but a pigsty.’

‘Actually,’ her husband replied, ‘it's a stables. A converted stables. Note how skilfully the new brickwork has been blended into the existing stone, the weatherboarding adding to the character of the place. The situation alone …’

The eight-year-old boy sitting on the top bar of the rotting gate wrinkled his freckled face, took another bite at his peach, and spat the stone in the direction of his parents. An instinctive subconscious reaction on his part. Mum and Dad were quarrelling again. It was nothing new, but it got very boring at times, like those winter days when he couldn't go outside to play and tried to amuse himself with the old wind-up gramophone and the three remaining 78 records. They grated, jarred his nerves, and he knew every line by heart until he couldn't get the words out of his head.

‘Don't do that, David,’ Sheila - small and dark-haired, her figure shown off to perfection by the tight-fitting green sweater and faded blue jeans - reprimanded her son sharply. In a way she was getting at Alan, too, making a last stand in a battle which she knew only too well she would not win. She never won on major issues like this one. Her victories were merely temporary ones, minor domestic issues.

‘Don't do what, Mum?’

‘Don't spit stones like that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it's bad manners, that's why.’

‘Oh.’ David Alton swallowed the last mouthful of fruit, and looked steadily at his mother. ‘Like belching at the table?’

‘Yes, but it isn't belching. It's burping.’

‘But belching and burping are the same. Daddy said so. I asked him.’

Sheila Alton took a deep breath and held it - simmering anger being checked. Not just the boy. Everybody. Even the weather-beaten farmer, creased brown cow gown falling loosely around his stocky figure as he sat in the driving seat of the green Austin pickup by the gate, the driving door open, surveying the three of them. He too was trying to curb his impatience. These folks were taking a long time trying to make up their minds. The man wanted to buy the place, his wife obviously didn't. A common enough situation. Estate agents had to cope with it all the time. Time-wasters, a lot of them. But the tall lanky fellow with the short beard didn't look the kind to go round looking at places he had no intention of buying. But you could never tell. It was all a question of who wore the trousers, him or her. His gaze went back to the girl again. Those jeans certainly did something for her, showed the delicate curves of her bottom, and didn't hide the slight wiggle when she walked. Tommy Hatherton hadn't looked at a woman like that for years. There weren't many of that calibre in the hills up here, and perhaps it was as well. When you were fifty - and in a routine - it could be distracting. There were too many other things to do.

Slowly he got out of the vehicle, moving in the direction of the gate. He didn't care for that kid, not that it mattered much. Cheeky. Rude, too. Everybody belched at table, but you didn't go round talking about it. A good clip round the ear. He felt like giving him one if he didn't get off that gate. The hinges were creaking and straining, some of the screws already working themselves loose. It didn't help matters when you were trying to sell a place if the front gate fell down at the feet of prospective purchasers. That girl was a good looker but she could be a bitch. The two of them were arguing again.

‘The whole place wants pointing.’ She stepped back, staring up at the walls. ‘Just look up there, Alan. There's hardly any mortar left in the gable end, and what there is is crumbling and falling out. And look at those windows. If you ask me they haven't even had a coat of primer. Some undercoat splashed on, and that's it.’

‘But things like that don't matter.’ He shook a cigarette out of a crumpled packet and took his time lighting it, trying to slow the pace down. ‘I can point and paint the place in a fortnight.’

‘And what about the interior? One coat of emulsion the whole way through, and most of that has soaked into the plaster. Plaster? Half of it's flaking off, and that which isn't looks like it's been put on by a … a trained monkey. And one that's not very well trained, at that!’

‘But the structure is sound.’

‘One half of it is an old granary that's full of woodworm.’

‘We'll treat it. Then convert it into three more bedrooms. A utility room underneath. That's executive style. Double the value right away.’

‘It will need to. Thirty thousand is one hell of a price for a disused stables with a few windows in it, a new roof, and …’

‘And fifteen acres of land.’

‘Which are situated on a hillside that's more like a ski slope, so rocky that even the thistles are having a job to hold their own.’

‘We shall keep sheep,’ he retorted. ‘Welsh mountain sheep that will think they're found the promised land. There's a fair stretch of garden here. We can get as much manure as we need from those stables down the road, I've no doubt. We can grow virtually everything we need in the way of foodstuffs. Rabbits and game will provide most of our meat. The rates will be negligible. As much wood as we can burn. We can live for virtually nothing. And David will benefit from the mountain air. He'll grow into a big strong lad, much healthier than living in the diesel-flavoured atmosphere of the West Midlands.’

‘Always big ideas.’ She turned away angrily. ‘A string of whims. An office job, nice and secure, to a pet shop that barely paid for itself. Then living at starvation level until you qualified as a vet. Somehow you made it, then just when Chapman is considering making you a partner, you throw it all up, cock a snook at society, and decide to opt out. Smallholding at bare subsistence level, living in a windswept mountain range, buried in snowdrifts for most of the winter, huddling together in a pigsty -’

‘A stables,’ he corrected her again. ‘And -’

‘I gotta be gettin' back.’ The farmer's shadow fell across them. Somehow he had managed to persuade the boy to climb off the gate. Hatherton pulled down the brim of his wide, battered hat to shield his searching grey eyes from the bright spring sunlight. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, a sign of impatience. ‘I was wonderin' if - now that you've had a chance to look at the place - whether …’

‘We're just talking over one or two details.’ Alan spoke quickly, stepping in front of his wife. Another hour or so of persuasion and Sheila would agree reluctantly to move out here - the vet was confident but he needed a little more time.

‘Look, I'll leave you the keys.’ Hatherton held out a couple of keys tied together with a length of plastic binder twine. ‘No real hurry, but I gotta be gettin' back. Come down to the farm and let me know. Must know tonight, though, one way or the other. Otherwise I'll have to ring the agent tomorrow. Maybe I'd get more money that way. These kind of places are in demand. There's potential, and there's the view, of course. That's what counts with a lot of folks - the view.’

They watched Hatherton shuffle off back to his truck, the way he glared at David with a mute, Don't you get climbing on my gate again, son, and if you do I 'opes you falls off and bloody well 'urts yourself. The engine spluttered into life, the rusting bodywork rattled, and then he was gone, trundling down the sloping, narrow lanes, the hedges with the first of their new growth soon hiding him from view.

The awkward silence was broken by David.

‘I don't like that man, Dad,’ he muttered, and produced another peach from the pocket of his frayed denim jacket. ‘He's nasty.’

‘I don't think so. Just busy. Too busy to bother with little boys.’

‘I'm not a little boy, and I don't like him. He pushed me off the gate, and I heard him swear. He said -’

‘It doesn't matter what he said,’ Sheila cut in sharply, ‘and in any case you shouldn't have been sitting on the gate. And don't eat any more of those peaches. They'll …’

‘Make me burp?’

‘Worse than that. They'll give you a bad stomach. Just because Uncle Fred gave us a crate doesn't mean that they have to be eaten up immediately. They'll keep for weeks. They'll ripen more and become juicier.’

‘Just this one, Mum. Please!’

‘All right, just that one, and no more.’

Alan and Sheila went back inside the house, leaving David sitting on the step in the sunshine. The interior was cold and bare, their footsteps echoing on the concrete floor and uncarpeted stairs. Downstairs there was a lobby, the one wall a strawboard partition that separated it from the lower granary, and a kitchen and lounge of equal dimensions. The upstairs comprised three bedrooms, a small landing, and a bathroom and toilet combined.

‘Cramped,’ Sheila said under her breath.

‘Compact,’ Alan said. ‘Cosy. Just look at the thickness of these walls. Almost two feet. The weather won't get through that.’

‘The damp has.’ Sheila's outstretched finger pointed to a damp stain above the front bedroom window. ‘Look at that, then. The plaster's coming off with it, not that it would take much to fetch it off. And the plug in the washbasin lets the water out. God knows what else we'll find. I'm almost scared to look.’

‘Then look at the view instead.’ Alan stood to one side so that she could see out of the small window, like the man said, the scenery is what most people will pay for.’

Sheila stared through the dirty glass pane, and for a few moments even she could not conjure up any fresh complaints. Sloping land at the rear of the building ran down to a wide rushing brook, then rose again, scrubland that held its own magnificence. Broom, gorse, heather all bursting into life, fresh green bracken piercing the dead brown foliage of last winter. Sheep grazed peacefully on the mountainsides beyond, a few lambs already in evidence. She watched a black one frisking amongst two or three ewes as though unable to make up its mind which was its mother.

A buzzard wheeled gracefully, its large, moth-like, ragged wings keeping the bird of prey airborne with only the slightest movement. A raven cronked its approval from the topmost branches of a stunted Scots pine. The tranquillity was almost overpowering until one adjusted to it. No cars, no people. Silence except for the natural sounds: the bleating of the sheep, the mewing of the buzzard as it hunted almost lazily. Somewhere a tractor was humming its own accompaniment.

She saw the mountain range beyond, the jagged peaks golden and brown, the furthermost ones purple. There were patches of dark green, artificial in their symmetrical squares and oblongs, Forestry Commission thickets of spruce and pine. One could almost smell the beauty, a sweet fragrance of heather and wild honeysuckle. A good place for a young boy to grow up in. So Alan said. But she no longer paid much attention to what her husband said. He had a knack of being able to enforce his current whims, produced all the pros at the right time and hid the cons.

‘Well?’ His arm came around her slim waist, his fingertips caressing her through her clothing. She shivered slightly, delightfully. Seductive. He was seducing her into his way of thinking. She was aware of what was happening but made no move to resist. If seduction failed then it would be rape, dragged here no matter what she said. She had no option. What was the point of holding out?

‘It's beautiful, I'll grant you that.’ Her voice was husky, sexy. ‘But we're seeing it at its best. What about the winter? Gales and blizzards will sweep across this whole countryside, buffeting this place like a cardboard box. It won't look or feel so good then.’

‘Each season has its own beauty,’ he quipped, and wondered just where he'd read that. It did not matter. It was true. ‘Shall we go down and tell old Hatherton we'll have it? It's a bargain really. We'll never get the chance again.’

She was silent, chewing her lower lip. What she said didn't count anyway. They were destined to come and live here.

‘Let's ask David.’ She tensed and caught her breath as her husband's fingers travelled upwards, circling a nipple, squeezing with just the right amount of pressure. Alan was good when it came to sex. He was also good at getting his own way with the minimum amount of trouble. Very good. Even now he was calling David. Sheila knew only too well what David would say. The boy was already soaking up these wide open spaces with an insatiable hunger. Like his father, he loved animals. Every creature was a prospective pet. There was no harm in that - except when he kept jars of insects and tadpoles alongside the jam in the larder. There was a limit. She heard his light scurrying footfalls on the stairs, and then he burst into the room, out of breath, excited, holding something between cupped hands.

‘What is it, Mum?’

‘How would you like to live here, David?’ Alan asked, smiling. ‘All this countryside to play in, alive with all sorts of creatures.’

Sheila's lips tightened. ‘Alan the Persuader’ again. A verbal bribe. He could have said: How would you like to live here, David? It'll be cold in winter and your fingers will hurt so much that you'll cry. There'll be no other children close by to play with and you won't be able to ride your new bike because the fields are too hilly and the lanes narrow and dangerous. And we won't have enough money to buy you expensive toys for Christmas and your birthday. But he did not say that. She had not for one moment expected him to. She knew him too well.

‘Gosh, Dad. Can we really? Can we sleep here tonight and go out first thing in the morning and …?’

‘No, son,’ Alan laughed, ruffling his son's mop of ginger hair affectionately. ‘Not just yet. A few weeks. It'll take time. But your mother wants to be sure that you'll be happy here and not pine for the kids at school and the cinema on Saturday afternoons.’

‘I don't care about the other kids, or the cinema,’ David blurted, his eyes wide. ‘There's no place I'd sooner live.’

Sheila sighed. Alan won his family over so easily. Whatever objections she might raise, it would be two against one.

‘What's that you're holding in your hands, David?’ she snapped, revealing all her pent-up frustration and anger.

‘Just a grasshopper, Mum,’ He opened his fingers, and something leaped a few inches into the air, landed on the floor, leapt again. The boy was after it instantly, catching it with one deft movement, holding it gently.

‘Ugh!’ Sheila turned her head away. ‘Horrible things.’

‘No, they're not, Mum.’ Defiance and resentment. ‘They're perfectly harmless. There were some on the cricket pitch at school last summer. A few of the boys took them back into class but Miss Williams made them let them go.’

‘I'm not surprised. They're as bad as those awful stick insects you've got in the goldfish bowl at home.’

‘They're not awful. They're nice. You don't understand.’

‘No, you don't understand, Sheila,’ Alan snapped. ‘You never have, and I don't suppose you ever will. Boys need to keep pets like grasshoppers and stick insects if they're going to understand the countryside.’

‘I think they're horrible, Alan, no matter what you say. All I ask is that David keeps them well away from me. I'm not having the larder turned into a menagerie.’

‘In some countries they eat grasshoppers,’ Alan went on, ‘and in Africa fried locusts are a delicacy. Like frogs' legs -’

‘Shut up!’ Sheila was already moving towards the doorway. ‘I can see that you two have already made up your minds about coming here. My opinion doesn't count so I won't bother giving it. But just keep all these obnoxious pets away from me.’

Father and son smiled at each other as they listened to her treading down the stairs, crossing the kitchen, and banging the front door as she went outside.

‘What's up with Mum?’ David asked, his grin fading.

‘Nothing, son.’ Alan dropped a hand on to the boy's shoulder. ‘You might learn to understand wildlife but you'll never understand women if you live to be a hundred. But try and keep your pets away from her. When we get home we'll put those stick insects out in the garage. It's warm enough now.’

‘OK, Dad. Do they really eat grasshoppers and locusts in other countries?’

They went downstairs and out into the sunlight. Sheila Alton was already seated in the car, engrossed in a fashion magazine. In her own way she had accepted the decision of her husband and son. There was nothing more to be said.

It was 28 May - two months since the Altons had first inspected ‘The Granary’. Two hectic months during which their suburban house had been sold, a host of other details attended to: and now all their possessions were being loaded into the large removal van. The driver sweltered in his cab, sweat pouring down his face as he studied a road map. This was one of those awkward jobs which he got every so often. Distance was no object - sixty miles was nothing. It was the narrow lanes up into the hills beyond Clun which worried him. You crawled in bottom gear, wondering if the vehicle was going to make it. In all probability it would, but you might meet up with a flock of sheep being driven in the opposite direction. Sheep couldn't reverse. A furniture van could … with effort. Right down to the bottom. Start again. If it wasn't your lucky day you might meet a car towing a caravan at the second attempt. All the way back down again. The frustration … the swearing.

That wasn't the full extent of the problems, though. Mostly they began when you arrived at your destination. These remote cottages were all the same. No drive or pull-in. You blocked the lane. All went well for an hour or so and then some silly bugger came along and expected you to move for him. The stairs would undoubtedly be narrow with a bend just where it was most inconvenient.

‘Well, that seems to be it, sir,’ the fair-haired man in green overalls said to Alan Alton. ‘We'll be moving off in a few minutes.’

‘Oh, there's the rabbit hutch.’ Alan pointed to the object in question on the back lawn. ‘We've got the rabbit in a box in the car.’

Two men moved to fetch the hutch.

‘Like a bleeding zoo,’ one muttered beneath his breath. ‘Did you see all them sodding insects in them goldfish bowls? Christ knows what they are.’

Alan Alton squeezed into the driving seat of the white Maxi. It was piled up to the roof with boxes and suitcases and a host of other impedimenta. Somewhere in the back was David, with Bunty the rabbit on his lap.

‘Are you all right, David?’ Sheila asked.

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘You've got Bunty?’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘You haven't got any of those … insects loose?’

‘No, Mum.’

The engine stuttered into life and, somewhat impeded, Alan managed to engage the gears. The car pulled away from the kerb and increased its lumbering speed.

‘It's hot.’ Alan wound the window right down. ‘Too damned hot. D'you realize, Sheila, we haven't had any rain for over three weeks now? Officially it's a drought according to what they said on the radio this morning.’

‘That's what worries me. These remote cottages with their own reservoirs have a habit of running out of water in dry spells. Then there's the problem of forest fires. Like in 1976.’

‘Damn it,’ he snapped. ‘We've had nothing but deluges all winter and just because we have a fine week or two everybody starts to worry.’

‘There was a wet winter before 1976.’

‘Don't worry. I'll check the level of the reservoir first thing tomorrow morning. We've got five thousand gallons in there. Then there's Hatherton's small reservoir which overflows into it - another five hundred gallons. We get his overflow as well, depending upon how much his livestock use. As for the fires, the nearest forest is a quarter of a mile away.’

‘Smoke is the worst hazard. If the forest burned the smoke would drift right on to us.’

‘Look,’ he was becoming annoyed. ‘We haven't run out of water and there isn't a fire.’

‘Yet …’ She looked out of the window and lapsed into silence.

They had unloaded the car by the time the removal van groaned to a halt in the lane outside ‘The Granary’. The driver climbed down and lit a cigarette. His shirt was saturated with sweat and his hands trembled slightly. He hadn't liked the pull up from Clun one little hit. There were no sheep or caravans to force him back, but there might well have been. And, right now, if anybody came along and asked him to back up, he would tell them to sod off.

‘Fancy livin' in a place like this, Bert,’ he said loudly, half hoping that the Altons might hear him. ‘No pubs. Not even anywhere to buy a packet of fags.’

They began unloading, carrying the furniture indoors, Sheila Alton directing where each item was to go. Alan supervised the outdoor stuff, the majority of it being taken up the crumbling stone steps into the granary.

‘Where d'you want this, chief?’ The one named Bert stood on the tailboard of the van, a wooden crate clasped in his arms.

‘What's inside it?’ Alan called down.

‘Stinks, whatever it is.’ Bert lowered the box, lifted the lid and peeped inside. ‘Cor blimey! Peaches. And goin' off, too, by the smell of 'em. Enough to knock you down. One or two good 'uns still left.’

‘We'll have it up here for now.’ Alan Alton reached down to take the crate. ‘We have a relative who's a greengrocer. I'm afraid he's overgenerous at times.’

Alan carried the box to the furthermost corner of the granary and set it down on the floor. He wrinkled his nose at the sharp smell of fermenting fruit. Then, as an afterthought, he covered the peaches with an old sack, and made a mental note to dispose of them during the course of the next few days. In the meantime, though, it would not do for David to find them.

However, at the moment Alan Alton had more important matters to attend to than Uncle Fred's crate of best quality Pennsylvanian peaches.

Chapter 2

It was one of those nights when sleep eluded the Altons. Basically the heat was the trouble: the stuffy atmosphere in the front bedroom in spite of the open window. The walls, too, were still warm, five hours after sunset, the stone having absorbed and stored the warmth, and now they were releasing it gradually.

Alan and Sheila lay naked on top of the single sheet, staring up into the darkness. They had not made love. They tried to convince themselves that it was too hot, but both knew that that was not the real reason. Their affection for each other had been dwindling slowly for a long time now - so slowly that they had hardly realized. Sex dropped from three or four times a week to twice. Then to once, usually on Saturday nights or Sunday mornings - a kind of routine, like cleaning out the poultry house. Something that you did because it was expected of you. You didn't really enjoy it.

Sheila turned on her side, facing away from her husband. She could not relax. Her thoughts hopped from one subject to another … like a grasshopper. She shuddered and tried to push those horrible insects from her mind. There seemed to be a plague of them this year. The field behind the house was alive with them. She could hear them now, and it was not just in her imagination. A humming that went on and on, seeming to intensify, a thousand violinists tuning their instruments, a nocturnal symphony in monotone. It jarred the nerves. She felt like going to the window and yelling for them to shut up.

She forced herself to think of something else. Sex. Now why sex? She seldom bothered about it these days. It didn't matter anymore. She didn't need it. She only indulged in sex because it was her duty to her husband, something that was expected of her. Liar! She winced. Alan was to blame. It was his attitude. When he was in the mood it was all too brief. Once satisfied, he rolled over and went to sleep, not caring whether she had managed an orgasm or not. She had read somewhere that a lot of men were like that but the fault lay with the woman. Some columnist … an agony column? It didn't matter. The wife should play a leading role sometimes, excite the man, seduce him. It wasn't easy. Not after eight years of marriage when you were in a rut. But it had not always been like that.

She saw Alan as he used to be. He didn't have a beard in those days, not that it mattered. He was somehow different - more considerate. For a couple of years life had been almost idyllic. Before they were married, that was. Lovers. Really in love. Sex actually meant something then. A lot, in fact. And then she had found herself pregnant. Her mind went back to that night, a night similar to tonight, but maybe not quite so sultry. A wood on the edge of town, soft springy grass and the smell of pines hanging heavy in the atmosphere. Every night courting couples went there, pulling their cars off the road into the rutted track that led between the rows of spruce. A favourite place for many. She and Alan had gone there regularly. But that one night she would never forget. Would her life have been any different if they had kept away? Maybe. Maybe not.

It was different from any other night in almost every respect. To begin with, it was the first time that they had ever stripped completely naked. They hadn't meant to. At least, Sheila was sure that it was not her intention, anyway. But the approaching warm dusk was seductive in itself. Clothes were an encumbrance. The failing light dispelled inhibitions. Her usual coyness evaporated steadily, her skin goose pimpled as it was bared, the soft grass beneath her so sensuous. Even kissing was different. Tongues probed, entwined, explored new areas of the human body with relish.

She tensed, relaxed, tensed again, spreadeagled in anticipation. Please, Alan, anything you want, but make it the best ever. He responded to her silent pleas. His body was so perfectly masculine, silhouetted above her in the gloaming, stroking her nudity, tracing a warm damp path with his eager tongue. Resistance was gone. Anything was acceptable.

She groaned softly with the penetration, gasped loudly as he began to thrust into her. Her fingers clutched at him, the nails raking his powerful broad back, pulling him closer to her. Hot eager breath fanned her face. Tonight there would be no perfectly timed withdrawal. This was how primitive man had mated with his woman on summer evenings, spurning the shelter of their cave, this same ground their bed of love. Nothing had changed over thousands of years. Clutching each other, convulsing, writhing, a shooting warmth that seemed to spread to every part of Sheila's body, emanating from the very depths of her womb. It went on and on, and on. It had never been like this before, an orgasmic circuit that had no earth.

It was all over for Alan much sooner, of course. She was aware of the slowing down of the thrusting, the full weight of his body crushing hers, his laboured exhausted breathing, a softening inside her, the withdrawal. But for herself, it still went on, as beautiful as ever.

Now he was impatient, and that was what spoiled it. She could have lain there for hours, basking in the warmth of his spent seed, but he was struggling back into his clothes, helping her to dress with an urgency that demanded a drink before closing time. She was crying, mingled love and regret. Oh, why did it have to end like this? For a few minutes she had willed herself to become pregnant, praying for some positive part of Alan. She had sobbed for a baby. Now, back in the car, she cried with the fear that her prayers in the heat of passion might have been heard and granted. It was as though the whole of their love had reached a peak, tottered on the very brink, and now was falling into an abyss from which there was no return. An irrevocable step.

Her erotic memories were swamped by all that had followed. Confirmation of her pregnancy, her parents' disappointment in her, the way Alan's mother had openly accused her of deliberately trapping her man. Even Alan had seemed to bear resentment towards her in the weeks preceding that hasty wedding. The dark storm clouds had drifted in over the horizon and stayed. Odd patches of blue sky, David her only consolation, her love scarred, scars that would never heal.

It all came back to her as she lay there, sleep eluding her like a dancing, taunting will-o'-the-wisp. Her back touched Alan's, but there was no response. His breathing was regular, but she knew that he was still awake. It could have been another night of love, an attempt to retrieve that which had slipped from them into the abyss. But it wasn't. It could never be like that again.

Alan was aware of his wife's restlessness. It would have been so easy to turn over, to allow his erection to push against her, mutely asking for his urge to be satisfied. But he did not. He did not really know why he denied himself the pleasure. An inborn stubbornness or something much deeper? It would be enjoyable; Sheila was good, very good. But it would merely be a repeat of that night eight years ago. The balmy night, the sheet would transform into soft sweet-smelling grass. Her body would be captivating, irresistible for a few moments, and the female instinct to conceive would be stronger than his own willpower. Not that there was any risk of her having a baby. She took her pill regularly. But he would be conceding to her, and she would be re-enacting those fateful few moments as surely as himself. Afterwards there would be no tender loving. Depression. Sometimes it lingered on into the following day. David sensed it although he did not understand, and it was not good for the boy. And that was as good a reason as any for resisting the urge to copulate.

Alan wondered what would have happened if Sheila had not become pregnant when she did. Would they have married? They weren't engaged. Just going out together. They hadn't even talked much about the future, living from day to day, enjoying each other's company; sex as well. It happened to a lot of couples. Boys and girls knocked around together until they got married simply because they had grown used to each other. He supposed it was as good a reason as any. Many split up. It took marriage to sort them out, make them realize that they weren't suited. In the long run, he concluded, he and Sheila would have arrived at this situation, anyway.

His hardness pulsed and throbbed, disturbing his analysis of his own marital set-up. And he was fully aware that it wasn't Sheila's nakedness and nearness which was arousing him. A mental picture formed in his mind. A girl in her early twenties. Long strawberry-blonde hair. Small breasts that scarcely curved beneath the red and blue checked working shirt. Worn twill jodhpurs that were sexy in the way they pouched, and close-fitting around the shapely bottom. Black knee-length leather boots. Pat Emmerton oozed sex both on and off horseback. Her eyes did all her talking for her, the way she sized a man up, ran her gaze over him, and left it lying on his trouser zip as if deliberately trying to conjure up an erection so that she could see the way it bulged. Maybe she even delighted in trying to embarrass the opposite sex. A prick teaser? And then, when you made a suggestion, she cut you down to size with a whiplash answer that had your hard-on wilting? Alan didn't know. She was an unknown quantity.

He had seen her only half a dozen times when she had ridden past the house, exercising the horses. On occasions her husband accompanied her. He was a different breed altogether, large-built and soft-spoken. Cultured. He always brought up the rear, often leading a third horse behind him. The worker around the stables, the shit shoveller, the fetch-and-carry man. Slow and easy going. She wore the jodhpurs, there was no doubt about that. Probably she had cornered him somewhere, trapped him. But she hadn't had to get herself pregnant to do it, because they didn't have any kids. The female lure had been used in a different way. More subtle. Maybe she was so good with her legs spread that Big Steve's couldn't do without it, but at least she was sensible enough not to get herself in the club.

Alan's forefinger and thumb had been moving subconsciously at the thought, and with an effort he checked himself. That time he had fetched a load of manure in the trailer, ten days or a fortnight ago, she had made her presence felt. Nothing deliberate, or at least he didn't think so. A couple of buttons on her shirt had been undone and he had been able to see the cups of her black bra. She must have known that he was staring at her tits, or was she too preoccupied trying to make his organ rise up inside his pants? Either way, she was a sexy bitch, but she would need careful handling. Chat her up some time. It was a nice thought.

He thought about David, At least he had obtained something worthwhile out of marriage. The boy was intelligent, and seemed to understand animals, which was a good thing, especially up here. There was more future for a boy of his kind in die country than in the towns. He might even become a vet. It was a good line. Lucrative too. Not so with farming. Not out here, anyway. It was a way of life, eking out a living at the same time. Healthy. Yes, he decided, he'd done the right thing bringing David into the hills. The schooling was good, too. Chapel Lawn was one of the best. He wouldn't lack education.

It would help if Sheila would settle. Perhaps she would in time. She'd have to work at it, though. He couldn't understand her fear of insects and things. Once they'd had a storming row over a spider she had crushed in the bedroom. Spiders were useful to have around. They kept the flies down. Harmless. Attractive, interesting - if you took the trouble to study them. Intelligent too.

He had seen a snake down by the brook that morning, basking in the warm sunshine. A female adder. He hadn't told Sheila. She would have remained inside for the rest of the day if he had. They, too, were relatively harmless. They only retaliated if you interfered with them or stepped on one accidentally. Even then, if you were in good health and didn't neglect the wound, not much harm would come to you. He would have to have a quiet word with David about adders. He didn't want the boy bringing any home.

Unrelated thoughts. Hatherton - money was his god. He was clever, too, and knew what he was doing. Like growing thirty acres of barley for seed. Nobody else up here thought the ground was good enough. Hatherton had made it good enough by using the right fertilizers. Even so, the weather was against him. That wasn't his fault - a calculated gamble that might or might not pay of. Unless it rained soon, it wouldn't.

Pat Emmerton again, her gaze fixed unwaveringly on the front of his trousers. His erection surged back to full stretch, and this time he was unable to halt the movements of his forefinger and thumb.

Sheila stood in the front doorway of ‘The Granary’ and stared horror-stricken beyond the newly cultivated garden down across the sloping field. Bare brown grass, withering in the scorching heat of the midday sun. Barren scrubland, a desert wilderness. Yet alive. Teeming. The ground moved in the stifling stillness, rippling like an incoming tide.

Insects. Grasshoppers!

Her revulsion mounted by the second. She saw the sharp heads, prominent eyes, wings, antennae the length of the bodies, the green armour standing out starkly against the brown background of the parched grass. The sound was increasing to deafening proportions, a myriad of musicians. Fiddlers of death.

She could not move. It was impossible to tear her gaze away from them. A million ancient mariners that held her transfixed with their evil eyes.

Suddenly, she swayed on her feet and for a second she almost fainted. Her strangled gasp of terror went unheard amidst the screeching symphony of malevolence that vibrated all around. The creatures had formed into a half-circle, the flanks moving forward like the pincers of a giant crab bearing down on its prey. And the grasshoppers' prey was crouching barely twenty yards from them, oblivious of their presence.

David!

The boy had an empty jam jar in one hand, a gauze tea-strainer in the other, and his whole attention was focused upon some object of insect life which he had trapped beneath the strainer. He worked diligently, unconcernedly, trying to transfer his captive to its glass prison.

Sheila dragged herself forward, features white with fear, yelling, screaming. Her vocal chords would not function properly. Her warnings died on her lips. She broke into a stumbling run, leaden limbs that moved only with the greatest effort. Her own safety did not matter. She had to save her son.

The grasshoppers were still and silent, legs and antennae poised. An ominous hush. Only their eyes moved, huge evil orbs that saw the boy and the woman, flies caught in a spider's web. There was no need to hurry. They were trapped.

Sheila ran blindly, twice felling headlong, picking herself up again, desperate to reach David. Her own safety, even her own revulsion of insects, was forgotten. Fifteen yards. Ten. Five. Still David had not seen her. He had the creature in the jar now and was tying a piece of cloth over the neck. Sheila could see it only too plainly as it leapt at the sides in its futile efforts to escape. The glass served to magnify its face, its expression - fear and hate. A grasshopper. And thousands of its own kind were on their way to rescue it. They were also going to take their revenge.

She tried to speak, but the words would not come. In desperation she reached out and grasped his shoulder. He looked round in surprise, wide-eyed. His expression changed to one of annoyance.

‘Mum! Whatever did you creep up on me like that for? You might've made me drop my grasshopper. I've spent nearly an hour trying to find one.’

Trying to find one! There are thousands in the fields big evil ones. Trying to cut off our escape. Come with me, David. We'll have to run. Words formed on her lips and then died away. She couldn't speak. He did not understand, was totally unaware of the danger.

‘Aw, it's not teatime yet, is it, Mum’

If s teatime, David. The grasshoppers' teatime. Run!

He made as if to turn away and she pulled him roughly towards her. The jar slipped from his grasp, fell to the ground, and splintered into jagged segments as it struck a stone. They both stared down at it, at the loathsome creature which lay amidst the broken glass looking up at them. Its eyes mirrored its hate, its gloating. The fear was gone. It knew. It saw the advancing army and waited patiently, savouring the intervening seconds.

‘You've broken my jar, Mum I And my grasshopper's got free. Maybe I can still catch him.’

No you won't. You're coming with me. She began to drag her son forcibly in the direction of the house. He was resisting, fighting her every inch of the way, slapping at her arms with his small hands, digging his feet into the dusty ground. Dust rose all around them. But still the terrible watchers did not move.

Where was Alan? Oh, where was he? She sobbed softly to herself. She couldn't speak but she could cry. If only he'd been around he could have done something, like setting fire to the dry grass to drive the things back.

‘Let me go, Mum. Let me go!’

He fought her with even greater intensity, a small boy determined to retrieve both his escaped pet and his pride. She had no right to do this. He wasn't keeping them in the larder any longer. All his pets were out in the granary. Even the stick insects.

His struggles were slowing down their retreat. If only she could make him understand. Warn him. But he hadn't so much as glanced behind him.

Then Sheila fell. The dry ground was slippery where the dust lay thickest, and, as David jerked with determined ferocity, in an effort to extricate himself from her hold, she felt her feet sliding. Falling, falling … falling. Instinctively she tightened her grip on the boy, and as she hit the ground he thudded on top of her, yelling out at the top of his voice, a cry of sheer pain.

‘My ankle. Oh, my ankle!’

They lay looking at each other. His freckled face was screwed up in agony. Beyond him she saw the grasshoppers.

Antennae moved, and they began to tune their violins once more. A lower note, slow and melancholy, like a weird funeral march. They moved - short hops that brought them nearer. And nearer. Only feet away. Thousands of them. Millions. All leering. There was no escape for the two humans now.

Sheila pulled David to her breast, covering his face with her hands so that he should not witness the terrible scene.

She wanted to tear her own gaze away, but again she found herself compelled to watch. Kill me, but let the boy go! A silent useless plea that was mocked with taunting music. We're going to kill both of you, crawl over you in our thousands, into every orifice, drive you mad, suffocate you. You'll be squirming, screaming, praying for death that will be a long time coming. The boy will die first. His resistance will be less.

She jerked her head away, looked back towards the house, one last despairing search for her husband. But he was not there.

Then they were upon her, alighting on her exposed flesh, jumping, jostling for position. She struck out and dislodged some, but almost immediately others occupied the vacant space. She writhed and fought, still holding on to David, hearing his muffled screams. They crawled over her eyes, bringing with them a green-hued darkness that obscured the blinding sunlight, penetrated her ears, somehow got inside her clothing and into the cups of her bra. She spat them from her mouth, vomiting as she did so, but dozens more forced their way inside. She was swallowing them. Choking.

Then, somehow, she managed to scream.

‘Oh, my God! David! Alan!’

A sharp slap across her face turned everything red. Her brain whirled crazily. Pain. The grasshoppers were gone. She stared, blinking in the blinding light which came not from the sun but from the bedside lamp. Alan was there. She gasped with relief, unable to comprehend. He was naked, kneeling above her on the bed, a look of amazement on his face.

‘What the hell's up with you?’ he grunted, shaking her shoulders roughly. I thought you'd had a fit or something.’

‘The … the grasshoppers …’ she gulped, looking around her fearfully, expecting to see the deadly myriads filling the room. Instead there was just one insect, a long-legged daddy-long-legs that zoomed upwards from where it had become trapped in her hair, and circled twice before alighting on the lampshade.

‘What grasshoppers? What the hell are you raving about?’

‘They were everywhere. Millions. In the field. All over myself … David.’

‘You've had a nightmare.’ He sighed with relief and made a grab for the daddy-long-legs which bobbed away from him and settled again, this time on the ceiling above them. He did not pursue it.

‘Thank God!’ She was sweating, her whole body glistening. ‘It was so real. I could feel them crawling all over me.’

‘I expect it was that feller up there. He probably landed on you by mistake. They're quite harmless.’

‘Kill it for me, Alan. Please.’

‘If it'll make you happy.’ Reluctantly he picked up a copy of the Farmer's Weekly from the bedside table, and rolled it between his fingers. She watched as he stood up, positioned himself, and struck. His aim was true. The dead insect remained on the ceiling, an unrecognizable squashed mess.

‘That better?’ There was contempt in his expression now. ‘That's what I call killing for killing's sake. Like when you kill spiders.’

‘They were so real.’ She leaned over, found a Kleenex, and wiped her brow. ‘So big. Like locusts. D'you remember that documentary on telly a few months ago about locusts? That's what these grasshoppers were like. Horrible.’

‘You're overwrought.’ He lay down on the bed again. ‘Little things are getting on your nerves. You need a holiday.’

‘Some chance.’

There's no reason why you shouldn't go and spend a week with the Lloyds at Barmouth. Take David with you.’

‘And what about you?’

‘You know very well that I can't leave this place. There's the livestock to look after.’

‘Which means we will never be able to have a holiday all together again … ever?’

Alan fell silent. It was true. He knew it. Sheila knew it. A fact of life … if you wanted to live this sort of life. It was best not talked about.

‘They were horrible,’ she muttered, staring up at the squashed daddy-long-legs on the ceiling. ‘I'll never be able to get them out of my mind.’

‘Hatherton's barley is struggling to survive.’ He tried to change the subject, said the first thing that came into his head. ‘If we don't get some rain within the next fortnight …’

‘Did you check the level of the reservoir today?’

‘Yes.’ He hesitated, and wished he had not mentioned the drought.

‘Well?’

‘It was half-full, or thereabouts.’

‘That means less than half.’

‘More than two thousand gallons. We'll just have to go carefully. Fortunately the brook hasn't dried up so the sheep will be all right. We should make it, but you'll have to stop using the automatic washer for a while.’

‘You'd better have a look round when you go into Knighton on Friday and see if you can pick me up an old dolly tub.’ Sarcasm, resentment. The strain was beginning to tell on her already.

She sat and swung her legs to the floor, picking up her discarded nightdress as she did so.

‘Where are you going?' he asked as she pulled it over her shapely naked body.

‘I just want to check that David's all right.’

‘Why shouldn't he be?’

‘No reason. I just want to make sure.’

‘It's that nightmare, isn't it? You've got to convince yourself that the giant grasshoppers haven't gobbled him up.’

‘You think it's funny, don't you? You think I'm some kind of a nutcase. Well, if I do go round the twist it's because you brought me out here’ - her voice rose – ‘to this Godforsaken place with all its creepy-crawlies, and the water running out by the hour. It might be a joke to you but I'm sick of it.’

He did not reply. Anything he said would add fuel to another petty quarrel, inflating it out of all proportion, one thing leading to another. And all because he'd said old Hatherton's barley was wilting.

Sheila crossed the small landing and pushed open the door of David's room. She let out a loud sigh of relief as she made out his sleeping form and heard his regular breathing. Then she stiffened as she saw something else, a jam jar on the window sill and silhouetted against the starlight something that moved inside it. She shuddered, drew back, and closed the door.

‘Well?’ Alan asked as she re-entered the room. He was lying facing her. She could tell that very recently he had had an erection. It was only too obvious. She wondered briefly about his erotic thoughts. They had never discussed fantasies. It might have helped them both if they had been frank with each other. She dismissed the thought. Possibly it was too late now, anyway.

‘He's all right,’ she said sharply, ‘but there's a jar on his window sill with some kind of insect inside it.’

‘I know. I saw it when I went in to say goodnight to him. I told him they were to be kept in the granary.’

‘As a matter of interest,’ she said slowly, averting her gaze, ‘What species is it?’

‘It's a grasshopper.’

She switched the light out before taking off her nightdress again. He watched the silhouette of her body against the light from the window. Almost perfect. Eight years hadn't altered her much. If anything, she had improved. It puzzled him why his erotic thoughts were centred on Pat Emmerton. Crazy. Maybe Steve fantasized about Sheila. Crazier still.

‘Alan.’ Her voice was low, almost a whisper, as she paused by the open window. ‘Listen. Can't you hear them?’

‘They've been chirping almost every night for the past two weeks.’

‘They … they are grasshoppers, aren't they?’

‘Jesus Christ! They might be crickets. I didn't incorporate them in my studies. I know the difference between a cow and a sheep, but …’

‘But whatever they are, they're creepy-crawlies.’ She was aware of the tremor in her voice. ‘Horrible nasty little things that crawl and jump, and alight on you when you're not looking.’

‘If you start sunbathing in the fields you might get one jump on to you. Otherwise it's highly unlikely.’

‘But the noise they're making. It's so loud. There must be thousands of them, just like in my dream. I wasn't that far from the truth.’

Alan did not reply. Instead he turned over again so that he faced away from his wife. The sooner this conversation was brought to a close, the better. He needed some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long hard day. He tried not to think about Pat Emmerton again.

He slipped into a fitful doze, dimly aware that Sheila was still awake. She was right about some things, though. Those grasshoppers seemed to have chosen his fields as the venue for their annual summer concert.

Chapter 3

Most people in mid-Wales and Shropshire knew Mac by sight. He had been around for as long as the present generation could remember, and many of the last remembered his as well. Nobody could really recall when he had first shown up. Some time during the last war, possibly just prior to it. A man of the open road, he was harmless enough, but a bit of a nuisance if one was too hospitable towards him. If the weather turned cold and he asked to spend a night in your barn in preference to your thick hedgerow, you granted him just that. One night, no more. Let him stay for a couple and it would develop into three or four, perhaps a week.

In some of the villages his arrival was not welcomed and he was encouraged to hasten on his way. That was because the children were frightened of him. The young ones, anyway. The older boys often baited him, threw stones or rotten fruit and vegetables at him. Mac knew the places where trouble was likely to arise and planned his itinerary so that he either avoided them altogether or else passed through them by night.

His appearance was the main cause of the infrequent trouble which befell him. Had he been simply dirty, scruffy, and smelly he would have attracted little attention. Had he been cleaner, and dressed in some of the better clothes which were sometimes offered to him, then he might not even have been identified as a tramp. But Mac was Mac, and his character demanded that he stood out in whatever company he chose to associate himself with, an eccentric who refused to blend into the conventional at any level.

Once, when he had ventured up into the highlands of Scotland, during an exceptionally dry spell in the late 'fifties, he had somehow acquired a multi-coloured tam-o'-shanter. Joseph had worn such a coat so why should not Mac sport headgear of equal splendour? Doubtless, had he been able to find a coat to match then he would have worn it. But that was asking too much so he had settled for a Celtic supporter's green and white hooped anorak which had somehow come his way in Glasgow. By this time he felt that he had an affinity with the country north of the border so he took steps to purloin a kilt (sadly of rather plain pattern) which had been inadvertently left hanging outside a small tailor's shop in Dumfries when the premises were closed. By the time he had reached Gretna on his homeward trek his various pseudonyms had blended into ‘Mac’, and he saw to it that all his former acquaintances further south were aware of this. He had ‘been awa' for a wee while visitin' ma kinfolk’ he explained, ‘and didna I never tell ye aboot ma folks up in Scotland?’

His beard was allowed to grow to its fullest extent, long and bushy, and in contrast to this he inflicted upon himself irregular haircuts so that his fine Scottish hat would continue to fit snugly upon his head. Tall and lean, he had developed a stoop as the years rolled by, walking with an ungainly style, particularly since he refused to accept the fact that he could no longer cover twenty miles in the same time that he used to when he first took to the road.

His pale blue eyes were as alert as they had always been. Many who saw him referred to him as ‘shifty’ on account of these, but he seldom stole except in cases of necessity. These fell into three categories: food, clothing, and drink. In accordance with his attire and assumed nationality he had acquired a taste for whisky, and in his own right was a connoisseur. Once a coveted bottle of Johnny Walker's ‘Black Label’ had fallen into his hands. He retained the empty bottle after he had consumed its contents, and thereafter filled it with any inferior brand which he could find. It was always to be seen sticking out of the pocket of his anorak, and once, during a lean spell, he had filled it with cold tea. For Mac an appearance of affluence in this respect was vital.

He still might have been able to pass through the countryside with a minimum of attention had he developed the Scottish knack of wearing a kilt in cooler climates. However, he decided that it was preferable, as well as fashionable, to wear a pair of trousers beneath it. Not just any trousers, but the thickest material which he could find in the loudest check. Size was immaterial. A length of string around his waist, beneath the kilt, prevented them from falling to his ankles, and a ‘hotch up’ every half mile or so ensured that they stayed reasonably well in the place they were supposed to.

Mac's year consisted of two pilgrimages. He wintered in Birmingham, feeding at the St Chad's charitable institution for dropouts and meths drinkers, and sleeping in the comparative warmth of the subways. With the coming of spring he headed westwards, through Shropshire, to spend the summer on the Welsh coast. Autumn saw the start of his return trip to the Midlands, a casual journey if the weather looked like holding fine.

He was fond of the Border hills. Seldom was he troubled with orders to move on, and frequently there was some casual labour to be found which brought in a few welcome pounds for his whisky fund. There were plenty of derelict barns to sleep in if the rains were too persistent, and he knew the farms where he was welcome for the odd night, anyway.

Dusk was falling when Mac found himself on the outskirts of Chapel Lawn. He was tired and very thirsty, and the hot weather had caused him to fall behind his schedule. He had planned on being well past Knighton by today. Still, what did it matter? A deviation from his normal route would be welcome, and it might just be a degree or two cooler up in the hills.

Having slaked his thirst in the clear brook beneath the Chapel Lawn bridge, he retraced his steps for a few hundred yards and began the steep ascent of Hodre Bank. The atmosphere was almost suffocating, and several times he was forced to rest. He drank sparingly from his Black Label bottle, now filled with cool spring water (it was certainly not the weather for Scotch and he had not come across any that was accessible since leaving Birmingham), and continued his steady climb in the gathering darkness.

He knew the Green Road which levelled out across the highest point to where it joined the Fiddler's Elbow. There were plenty of places where he could sleep. The ground was warm and dry, and in the morning he would set about finding some breakfast. The problem was, and it was one that was increasing annually, a lot of the old farmers were retiring and selling up, and a younger breed were moving out from the suburban areas. They didn't understand the likes of Mac, and it made life more difficult. Sod 'em, though, they wouldn't keep him out of the hills. He didn't need their handouts. If the worst came to the worst he could look after himself, thank you very much.

He found what seemed an ideal place in which to spend the night, almost as though Providence had prepared it for him. On the sharp bend from which this place derived its name was a clump of tall pines, an isolated spinney that had been left when the long wood had been felled. A large disused farm trailer had been parked beneath the overhanging branches, the tyres flat and the corrugated metal sides rusting. It was like a shed, he decided, protection from both the heat and the cold. As he shuffled around, preparing his quarters, he made a mental note that it might be worth returning here another time. Really cosy.

Mac drank some more of the water, and finished off the remains of the stale ham sandwich which that woman at the Sitwell Arms in Bucknell had given him in order to get rid of him. Nice pub it had been, too, with tables in the garden overlooking the river. He could have lingered there a while longer. They weren't crowded, either. But the licensee's wife had refused to let him stay on the premises. Still, at least he'd got a sandwich out of her, and she hadn't threatened to call the police.

His gaudy trousers had been in his haversack for the past three weeks. It was nice to feel the air circulating under his kilt. It gave him a feeling of freshness, almost as good as having a wash. And, he determined, if this hot spell continued for much longer he would have a bathe somewhere, a nice quiet stretch of river where he could stand in the water above his knees, holding up his kilt, and let the current wash away everything which he had accumulated during the winter months. It was a refreshing thought, on a hot night, anyway. But there was no hurry. Summer was only just beginning.

Somewhere an owl hooted, and as he settled down he became aware of the nocturnal sounds around him … the grasshoppers and the crickets. He didn't know which were which even after all these years spent in the open. But they were nice to listen to. So soothing. Like a lullaby exclusively for himself.

Mac became drowsy and started to doze. The insect music was loud. Louder than he had ever known it before. That, he presumed, was because the little fellows were close by, all around him. It gave him a feeling of companionship. He didn't mind them in the least. The only species he really abhorred were earwigs. The very thought of them gave him the shudders. One night, somewhere over Welshpool way, one had crawled into his ear. That had really given him a fright. Still, they were called earwigs, and one could only suppose that they got their name because they liked exploring ears. Funny, but not very nice.

He fell into a deep sleep, a dreamless contented slumber such as befitted a man whose conscience never troubled him and who was secure in his own way. The future seldom brought serious problems. One day was much the same as another, but that was the way he liked it.

Mac slept the sleep of the exhausted, right through the night. Dawn came, a faint light in the eastern sky at first, which quickly brought full daylight. And still he slept. Usually he was awake at daybreak, breakfasting leisurely, and then setting off again on the road. But not today. The heat of the last few weeks had tired his ageing body. Birds sang, and fluttered down from their roosting places in search of food, seeming to realize the necessity of eating quickly and then finding a shady place in which to pass the coming day. Wood pigeons cooed softly and then took off with a clattering of wings, flying down to the valleys below to ravage what wilting crops they could find.

But the dawn chorus had its own signature tune, a harsh humming that grew and grew, coming from every vestige of parched undergrowth around the Fiddler's Elbow. The music drowned the feint rustling, the ordered approach of columns of giant insects as they filed out like a massive army on a route march. Platoons, single companies, moving in perfect formation, all converging on the sleeping kilted man beneath the tall pines.

Mac stirred restlessly. Something was crawling on his face. His grimy hand brushed it away with a grunt of annoyance. He did not open his eyes. Insects often passed over him and they did not worry him unduly. Except earwigs - and he had learnt to recognize the feel of their squirming movements.

‘Gerroff!’ He puffed up his cheeks, blew, and swatted again, somewhere in the direction of his left ear.

A minute passed. Two. He began to scratch. He was itching all over. Like fleas, only much larger. Every inch of his body, inside his kilt, around his testicles, up to his chest and back, over his head beneath the colourful tam-o'-shanter.

He swore, opened his eyes, and then lay there rigid, unable to believe what he saw, the fear inside him mounting by the second. They were covering him. Insects, like grasshoppers only much bigger. Dark bodies, red evil eyes, glassy wings interlaced with bright yellow fibres. Oh, God, what were they?

He scrambled up, slapping at himself, sensing the revolting bodies being crushed by the palms of his hands. Panic. He opened his mouth to scream, but before the sound had begun to leave his throat they were pouring in between his open lips, pushing and jostling on his tongue, falling down and wedging on his tonsils. He choked and tasted bile. They were trying to get up his nostrils, and into his ears like earwigs. He couldn't see now. Clusters of them covered his eyes.

His hands were wet and sticky, the corpses of the crushed adhering to his skin, a wriggling mass enveloping him from the soles of his feet to the balding patch on the crown of his head.

Blindly, he broke into a shuffling run. He had no sense of direction and it was impossible to see. As fast as he pawed them from his eyes others took their place. He felt the hard road beneath him. Left or right? It didn't matter.

The noise was deafening, a chirruping that went on and on, louder and louder. He blundered into a fence and felt the pain on his thighs as cruel barbed wire tore through clothing into skin. Back on the road, A squelching beneath his boots. He was treading on them in their hundreds. They were everywhere. More and more were joining those already clinging to him.

Mac's arms flailed wildly as he ran, a moving, seething, unrecognizable shape, choking, fighting for breath. Oh, Christ! He was swallowing them and they were wriggling alive in his stomach.

Off the road again, on to grass. This time there was no fence. The ground was rough and sloping. He felt himself falling. He was airborne, somersaulting crazily. Dropping like a heavy weight, gathering speed all the time. Barely conscious.

A sickening crunching thud. Everything exploded before him in a cascade of brilliant red lights. There was pain, more intense than anything he had ever experienced in his life before. Agony, but only for a few brief seconds. Then merciful oblivion swamped him.

Sheila Alton felt as though she might have a migraine coming on. Her head throbbed, a dull nagging ache which was rapidly intensifying. It always started like that, worsening until she was forced to go and lie in a darkened room. And then there was little else to do except sweat it out.

Occasionally, in the very early stages, just when the headache was starting, she was able to ward off the worst of the migraine by taking a glass of neat whisky. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Like the time when David was a baby. She had been pegging out a line of nappies in the garden. A combination of dazzling sunlight and stark whiteness had rendered her almost blind. She had staggered indoors, found a bottle of whisky, and drunk half a tumblerful right off. Ugh! It had tasted vile, but it had done the trick. The migraine dulled and slowly went away. Then, about half an hour later, the health visitor had called to see how David was faring. A staid, good living woman, she had recoiled from the strong fumes of the spirit emanating from Sheila's mouth, and had hinted that alcoholism was all to prevalent today in young mothers.

Now Sheila needed the whisky again. She should have taken it earlier. She went indoors and groped around in the kitchen. There was a bottle somewhere in the recess of the Welsh dresser. Her sight was going fast, the room was dimming.

Her fingers touched glass. A square shaped bottle. She pulled it out. There was no time to go in search of a glass. She removed the cork, pushed the neck between her teeth, and tilted the bottle. The burning liquid scalded her throat, making her cough and choke, some of it trickling down her chin. Some spilled on to the rubber tiles on the floor.

Sheila swayed, holding on to the dresser for support. The room was gyrating around her. For a moment she thought that she was going to faint, but the sensation passed off in a few seconds, leaving her with a feeling of nausea. Her head pounded abominably. She would have to go and lie down for a while. She hoped that she would be able to make it up to the bedroom.

Leaving the uncorked bottle on the dresser, she groped her way to the stairs and slowly ascended to the landing. Going into the bedroom she pulled the curtains closed, and with a sigh of relief sank down on to the bed.

Sleep was impossible no matter how much her tortured body cried out for it, eyes tightly closed in a futile effort to shut out the sunlight which filtered through the curtains. She wondered how long it would be before Alan came back. It might be ten minutes or three hours. He had gone into Knighton for some sheep netting. David was at school She was alone. Alone. A feeling of helplessness surged over her. They did not even have any neighbours. Nobody to call upon if anything serious ever happened. It would be another month before the telephone was installed. Perhaps longer. The sense of abandonment grew stronger and stronger. Sobs shook her body.

Some time later she fell into an uneasy doze as her blinding headache began to subside. Restlessly her limbs twitched. Outside the sun was nearing its zenith, and the hottest part of the day was approaching. The heat was stifling and unrelenting, and the stone walls were already absorbing it, storing it. After dark it would be slowly released, bringing with it another unbearable night.

Her hand moved upwards, her fingers flicking at her face. Something tickled her forehead; a loose strand of hair perhaps. Something fluttered, and the sensation was transferred to her cheek.

Suddenly she sat up in alarm as consciousness pervaded semi-slumber. A gasp of revulsion escaped her lips, and her skin crawled and prickled. The dressing table mirror was directly opposite her. She saw her own reflection, her look of terror … and the thing crawling on her face!

She screamed, a long drawn out scream that embodied everything that was repulsive to her. Then silence as she stared, unable to comprehend. Another nightmare, a figment of her imagination like the other night? Then the dark-bodied insect shifted its position, she felt the movement of its spindly legs, and she knew that it was real.

She screamed again, louder and longer than before, windmilling frantically with her arms. Something fell from her: a winged creature that squatted on the crimson coverlet, eyeing her malevolently. Sheer hate. The very personification of evil.

Sheila shrank away from it, pressing herself back against the headboard of the old-fashioned bed. There was a constriction in her throat, and she trembled violently. She wanted to flee, but there was no place to run. This … this thing squatted between her and the door. Furthermore, it was well aware that it had her trapped. Only its eyes moved, winking redly in the semi-gloom of the room, waiting and watching.

Her breath came in gulps. Human and insect stared at each other. Time stood still. But one of them had to make the first move.

The girl's breathing became more normal. Something else was mingling with her terror. Anger. This was all David's fault. He had been told by both herself and Alan that all of his pets were to be kept outside in the granary. He had obviously disobeyed. Only the other night there had been one of those awful stick insects in a jar on his window sill. He had been made to take it outside the following morning. But he had sneaked it back indoors again. Now it had escaped and seemed to be blaming Sheila for its period of captivity. It wanted revenge!

She wondered if stick insects could sting. If so, how poisonous was their venom? Surely not, though. If they were dangerous then pet shops would not be able to sell them openly. That was logical. But it did not alter the fact that the thing was horrible. Terrifying to anybody who had an inbuilt fear of insect life. Possibly it knew this, sensed her terror, and was capitalizing on it. Psychological warfare.

She took a deep breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw, lying on the bedside table, part of that daddy-long-legs still squashed on its covers, was Farmer's Weekly. A weapon that had been used once to kill - and it could be used again.

Slowly, never for one second taking her eyes off the insect on the bed, Sheila reached across and picked up the magazine. Her heart beat wildly. Her head still pounded. Take your time. Pretend that you've lost interest in the thing and you're going to read for a while. Open out the pages. Now roll it up tightly.

The creature watched but it did not move, did not seem to guess what was happening. She held the rolled magazine firmly in her right hand and estimated the distance between herself and her enemy. Two feet, no more. Slowly does it. It might jump out of the way if it guesses what you're going to do. It might even … attack!

One shot. It had to count. There would be no chance of a second.

Scratch your ear with the magazine. Fool it into thinking that you use publications regularly as body scratchers. Tiny hateful eyes watching your every move, following you.

Get ready … now!

Sheila's aim was straight and true. Sheer desperation aided her judgement and accuracy. A dull ‘splat’ as the rolled journal hit the nylon coverlet. She held it there, pressing down on it, frightened in case the insect had somehow survived the blow. Many times one swatted a moth and it flew off apparently unharmed.

Fearfully she lifted up her weapon. A sigh of profound relief. Mingled antennae, legs, and wings, in a virtually unrecognizable morass. But the thing was dead. Dead. She was safe.

She felt weak and sick, and was forced to turn her face away. Only then was she aware that her migraine was almost gone, just a dull tenderness in her head, a strained feeling in her eyes. Perhaps shock was the elusive cure for migraine that doctors and specialists had sought for years. She grimaced at the thought. In that case, where stick insects were concerned, a migraine was certainly the lesser of the two evils.

She was shaken, badly. But the desire to clean up the mess was a priority for her. Remove all traces of the hideous creature. Wipe it up on the magazine, burn it, wash the bedcover. Then it would be erased as surely as that nightmare was on waking. Only the memory remaining to make her flesh creep.

The issue of the Farmer's Weekly blazed and smouldered in the lounge grate. The automatic washing machine shuddered, the water being whipped to a foam, visible through the circular glass porthole. Totally against Alan's instructions. Damn him. Damn the … the stick insect. Now it was all over. It must never happen again. Never.

She heard a car slowing in the lane outside. Stopping. Voices. A door slammed. The engine revved and the vehicle moved off again. Relief at first for Sheila. That would be David home from school, delivered by the car that was used for school transport in these remote areas. Company would be welcome. She needed somebody around, somebody to talk to. Then her anger returned. It was all David's fault, and he must be made to realize just what he had done. And those horrible insects in their jars in the granary had to go. Now. This minute. Set free in the wild. Or killed.

Running eager footsteps. Her son burst into the kitchen, satchel swinging loosely from one shoulder.

‘'Lo, Mum. D'you know what we did today We -’

‘I'm perfectly aware what you've done today, David!’ Sharp tones, reprimanding.

‘What … how d'you know what we've done today, Mum?’

‘I'm fully aware what you've done, David. You've brought your stick insects into the house again. One got out. It landed on me in the bedroom when I was lying down feeling ill.’

‘No, Mum. Honest. I didn't bring them into the house again after you told me not to.’

‘Are you telling me the truth, David?’

‘Honest. I swear I am.’

‘Then one must have escaped in the granary and somehow found its own way into the house. You'd better go and check them right away. And I think when your father comes home you'd better get rid of them altogether!’

‘Oh, Mum. Please …’

‘Go and check them this minute, David.’

She listened to his retreating footsteps, their urgency displaying his love for those repulsive creatures. It was hard on the boy, but the things would have to go. She would insist on it when Alan came home. Even if it meant making a major issue out of it.

Within a couple of minutes David was back in the kitchen, an expression of relief and hope on his freckled features.

‘They're all there, Mum. Honest. It couldn't've been a stick insect in the bedroom. Probably it was a grasshopper. There's loads of them about, teeming in the fields.’

‘I'm well aware of that.’ She shuddered. ‘But I'm afraid I can't stand the thought of those things around the place. Just suppose they did get out.’

‘But they're perfectly harmless, Mum.’

‘Nevertheless, I'm fed up with all these creepy-crawlies. We'll discuss the matter when Daddy gets back. He should've been back ages ago. Wait, I think I can hear a car coming down the lane …’

It was some minutes before Alan walked into the house. Something outside in the yard had delayed him. There was a thoughtful expression on his face.

‘Those Yucca plants we brought with us.’ He frowned. ‘What the hell's happened to them? Something's eaten them off right down to the roots. Nothing would touch them surely. Certainly not sheep or cattle.’

‘Dad,’ David interrupted impatiently, ‘there's been a stick insect in Mummy's bedroom when she was lying down poorly. She's says it's one of mine that escaped, but it isn't. They're all in their jars, and she says I've got to get rid of them, and …’

‘Now, steady on.’ Alan turned to Sheila. ‘What's been going on then?’

‘I had a migraine,’ she said, ‘but it's gone now. I had to go upstairs and lie down, and I dozed off. I was awakened by one of those horrible things crawling all over me. I killed it, but David says it isn't one of his. But they'll have to go all the same. I can't stand them around the place any longer.’

‘You've been drinking.’ He leaned forward and sniffed in the region of her mouth, ‘Whisky. Maybe that's where the insect came from. An illusion of drink.’

‘You're being stupid, Alan.’ Her cheeks became flushed, and her lips were compressed into a single bloodless line. ‘It was real enough. Terrified as I was, I killed it.’

‘Let's have a look at it, then?’

‘You can't. I burnt the magazine I swatted it with and washed the coverlet.’

‘So my Farmer's Weekly has gone for a burton. And I hadn't finished reading it. And I thought I told you not to use the automatic.’

She turned away. A pair of rubber gloves which she had been wearing were hurled into the far comer of the room.

‘God, how I hate this place’, she muttered.

His mood changed, and walking across to her he slipped an arm around her waist, aware of her resentment as she stiffened.

‘I'm sorry.’ For once he meant it. He knew only too well her revulsion where insects were concerned. ‘Look, we've got to identify the culprit. We can't condemn David's stick insects just because some creepy thing showed up in the bedroom. What was it like?’

‘It had horrible red eyes. They seemed to understand what I was thinking. It knew I was afraid. About an inch and a half long. Maybe bigger. The wings had sort of yellow stripes on them.’

‘Well, it certainly wasn't a stick insect. Nor was it a grasshopper.’

‘I don't care what is was. It was revolting.’

‘Dad, I don't have to get rid of my stick insects, do I?’ David was near to tears, slipping a hand into his father's as he spoke. ‘Please?’

‘I said …’ Sheila began, then choked back whatever it was that she was going to say.

‘David.’ Alan looked down at his son and smiled. ‘I think you'd better take extra special care that none of your pets manage to escape. And on no account are they to be brought into the house. I think, though, for the moment they've been reprieved.’

‘What does reprieve mean, Dad?’

‘It means you can keep them.’

‘Gosh, thanks, Dad. Can I go and play outside?’

‘Tea will be ready in a few minutes.’ Sheila felt herself conceding once again. No matter what she said, however much she meant it, it never counted. Those insects in the jars in the granary would get neither their freedom nor the death sentence.

‘After tea then, Mum?’

‘I suppose so,’ she sighed. ‘But you're not to go further than the second field. You're not to bring any specimen of wildlife back with you, and you're to be in bed by eight o'clock.’

Tea was eaten in virtual silence. Even David, sensing friction again between his parents, did not keep up his usual banter. He was grateful when it was time to be excused from the table. Snatching up his small butterfly net he made for the door.

‘And don't bring anything back with you,’ Sheila called after him.

‘There's something on your mind.’ She turned to Alan. ‘What is it? Has the level in the reservoir dropped still further?’

‘Naturally it has,’ he said, ‘with virtually no water going into it. We're going to have to be very, very careful, otherwise we'll run out before the end of the month. But that's not what's worrying me most.’

‘What then?’

‘That insect. The one you killed. I wish you hadn't burnt the remains.’

‘Why?’

‘I'm not exactly an expert where insects are concerned, but I'd give anything to have a look at that one. You're sure you described it fully to me?’

‘As sure as I can be. I was scared half to death so I can't vouch for details. But it was the eyes which frightened me most. Do you have any idea what it might have been?’

‘An idea, but it's too crazy for words. If I was to ring up the Ministry of Agriculture or the Forestry Commission they would have me taken away and certified. It can’t be, but …’

‘What do you think it might have been then?’ Anxiety was creeping into her voice.

‘If we were living in parts of Africa, or some of the southern states of America, I would have no doubt about its identity. But here, in England, even in the freakiest of droughts and heatwaves since 1976, I still find it incredible. Perhaps not absolutely impossible.’

‘Come on, let's have it?’ Sheila leaned forward, and for the second time that day an icy trickle ran up her spine.

‘Locusts.’ Alan Alton's face was grim as he spoke. ‘What you have described to me is undoubtedly some species of locust. Which one, and how the hell it came to be here in Shropshire, I've no idea. But those Yucca plants … something has eaten them off.’ He stood up. ‘I'm going outside to take a look around. If I'm right, then the odds are that that specimen wasn't on his own. I just hope to God that I'm wrong!’

Chapter 4

David was glad to be away from his parents. The signs were that they were going to have another of their big rows, the ones where they yelled and screamed at each other, and then didn't speak for days afterwards. When that happened he felt like an intruder. Embarrassed. It wasn't so bad living out here, though. At least there was room to get away from them, leave them to sort things out for themselves. They usually managed to patch it up after a while. But he wished they could get on better together. Mum didn't like the countryside. She had said so all along. He couldn't understand her, particularly the way she shied away from any small creature. Except dogs and cats. Dad was going to buy a dog. A collie, to help him with the sheep. Mum wanted a cat to help keep the mice down in the granary, but Dad refused to let her have one. He didn't like cats, even though when he was a vet he'd attended to hundreds of them. He said they were vermin, hunting nesting birds, especially game, and if there was a cat always on the prowl then he wouldn't stand any chance of rearing any pheasants or partridges to shoot when the winter came.

David had asked his father when he was going to be allowed to learn to shoot. The answer was always the same. ‘You'll have to grow some first, laddie. In the meantime, you can come out with me and learn how it's done.’ David was looking forward to that.

He reached the end of the second field. It was hot. Too hot. Even with the sun dipping down over the hills in the west the heat didn't seem to have lessened much. In the distance, several miles away, he spotted a pall of smoke that had mushroomed into the sky and hung there. There was no breeze to disperse it. Somewhere a forest or a stretch of moorland was on fire. He just hoped that the birds and beasts of the wild in that area had managed to get out in time. He shuddered at the thought of them being burned to death, trapped in a ring of flames, squealing with fear, dashing this way and that, and finally being consumed by the encroaching tongues of flame.

His mother had said that he wasn't to go beyond the second field. Also that he was to be in bed by eight o'clock. He ought to have brought his watch with him, the one he'd had in his stocking last Christmas. But it was still lying on the table in his room. Nevertheless, it couldn't be anywhere near eight o'clock yet. There was plenty of time. And if he did just get over the fence, cross the field that belonged to Mr Hatherton, and take a quick walk along the valley below the Fiddler's Elbow, who was to know? He didn't like being deceitful, but, after all, he hadn't actually promised not to go beyond the second field. And it wasn't dangerous along the valley. And he might find something interesting down there.

It took him less than a minute to convince himself that there was no harm in a brief exploration of the valley and that it might prove worthwhile. He would keep an eye on the sun. When it finally disappeared behind that second peak of the Radnorshire range of mountains then he would make tracks for home.

He ducked down and squirmed his way under the bottom strand of the barbed wire fence. A slight feeling of guilt assailed him again and he looked round, fearful that someone might be observing him. There was nobody in sight. A sultry stillness everywhere, emphasized by the continual strains of the insect chorus. Bees hummed in the heather. A bumble bee zoomed around his head and then made off, its curiosity satisfied. And, of course, the noise made by the multitude of grasshoppers. The funny thing was, he scratched his head in puzzlement, the music seemed to be coming mostly from the forestry plantation above the road. Possibly they were faring better up there on odd stretches of grass that had been shaded by the trees and was not as parched as the brown growth in the fields. He dismissed the thought with a shrug and set off, following the course of the brook. There was still some water trickling over the slate bed, but nothing like the volume that had flowed down from the hills above a few weeks ago.

The path was narrow and winding, a steep rise on his left, the stream on his right, and dense undergrowth that looked sick. Very sick. He glanced up at the sun again. Another ten minutes and he would have to start back. Well, a quarter of an hour, anyway. It was such an interesting place down here in the valley. You never knew what might lie round the next bend; a startled rabbit, leaping up, bounding for cover, a hen pheasant foraging in search of grubs.

Then he saw the snake. He knew it was an adder because he had seen a picture of one in his little pocket book of British Reptiles. It was curled up on a flat piece of slate, the dark V markings clearly identifying it from a grass snake. He approached cautiously. It did not move. Perhaps it was dead. A lot of wildlife was dying in the drought.

David found a stick, and holding it at arm's length he extended it towards the reptile. His hand shook. Maybe he ought to leave it alone, hurry on past it. Suddenly it moved. The head reared up, hissed warningly, and in a trice it was gone, slithering away from him, disappearing into a clump of thick heather. He let out his pent-up breath slowly and tossed the broken branch away. Sheer relief. It might just have come in his direction …

Another fifty yards and he would have to turn around. He hoped that he didn't come across any more adders. They weren't nice.

The track narrowed. A left hand bend but whatever lay beyond was obscured from his view by a fallen spruce that blocked his progress. He began to climb over the thick trunk, using the branches to pull himself up.

Some flies settled on his head, a thick black swarm that buzzed and crawled. He brushed them away with his free hand but they were persistent, settling again, walking on his face. He spat, but it didn't make any difference except to dislodge the one that was clinging to his lower lip.

A movement. Large slow wingbeats, a brown bird taking off, mewing loudly like a startled cat. A buzzard. It had been feeding on something and he had disturbed it. More flies. Thousands of them buzzing up from somewhere.

David struggled with the obstructing branches, hit out at the flies again, and managed to get a leg over the trunk, drawing the other one up, losing his balance, tumbling on to the opposite side.

He picked himself up. The swarm of flies was now thicker than ever, homing in on him as though bent on revenge for the intrusion of their domain. He flailed wildly and spat again. The stench was vile, nauseating. Maybe there was a dead sheep somewhere which the flies and the buzzard had been feeding on. He needed a swat of some kind. A fern would do. He bent down and was in the act of breaking off a frond when he saw -

He stared, horror-struck, unable to comprehend the scene which greeted him through the cloud of black flies. Gaudy colours, bright green and white hoops on the torn anorak, the multi-hued cap lying at an unnatural angle on the smashed skull but failing to screen the gaping wounds and the congealed blood. Twisted hanging limbs, flesh ribboning from them, raked by the claws of the scavenging buzzard. One eye hanging by a thread, the other socket empty. And the body held upright by the sharp stake which impaled it, the point emerging through the breast bone, groaning under the weight but still holding firm. The bloody features grinned even in death, mouth wide and sagging, the empty hole seeming to wink at the other dangling eye. A corpse that was alive and moving, flies feasting hungrily, and ants … ants swarming in ordered columns in and out of the orifices in the skull.

David stepped back, felt the branches of the fallen tree digging into him. And for the first time in his life he stared death full in the face; death in its most horrible form, a human body that was rapidly being devoured even as he watched.

Realization was slow and dreadful. His brain was numbed, flies all over, him, as though they were trying to strike a comparison between the dead and the living.

Movement returned to his limbs. He started to scream, and then began to fight with the obstructing spruce, forcing his way back up on to the trunk, heedless of the sharp branches, falling headlong the other side. He lay winded, crawled, dragged himself to his feet, and began to run. Run … run … run … Screaming.

Footsteps pounding in his wake, heavy dead feet that shambled after him, stentorian breathing, rasping from lungs that were filled with ants and buzz flies, eyes that stared sightlessly yet could see, arms like carnival streamers reaching out to get him … get him …

His falls were numerous. There was blood on his hands and knees. His chest hurt, he couldn't breathe properly, and his screams died away to sobs and gurgles.

He dared not glance behind him. The thing was coming, a ghoul that lived on human flesh. He could still hear the thumping footsteps, faster and faster. It wasn't his heart. Those laboured breaths were not from his own tortured lungs.

The end of the path was in sight. The barbed wire fence that was the boundary of his father's land. Under the bottom strand, barbs scratching his back. It did not matter. He hardly noticed it.

And then he felt those hands closing on his shoulders, skeletal fingers with only remnants of flesh hanging from them, cold and strong. Pulling him back. He managed one more scream and then he passed out.

He was being carried, cradled like a baby, jogged over rough ground. His senses returned, and the fingers of terror pawed at him. To be eaten alive … eaten alive … Somehow he managed to muster up one more scream, a shrill piercing one, his eyes tightly shut so that he should not see.

He was being set down on the ground gently. He would not look. He must not. Stones dug into his back and buttocks. His head was turned away, every limb shaking. Eyelids compressed tighter than ever.

‘David … David …’

His own name being called, softly, tenderly, a voice that he recognized. Fingers stroked his neck and cheek, warm gentle fingers that did not have the flesh peeling from them. He would risk a look. A squint.

His father. Dressed in jeans and a soiled T-shirt. A look of concern on his bearded features. Both eyes were intact, the mouth straight and firm. And no ants or flies crawled over him.

‘David … are you all right?’

He didn't answer. He couldn't. He just looked and trembled. Then he was sick. Violently. Everywhere went dark, but he didn't pass out again.

‘What's happened? We heard your screams up in the house. Here's your mother coming now.’

Sheila, breathless from running, hair awry, almost frantic, joined them.

‘Oh, thank God! He's not hurt, is he?’

‘Seems to have had a bit of a fall,’ Alan was running his fingers swiftly all over the boy. ‘Nothing serious. But he's in one hell of a state. We'd better get him back to the house and try and find out the cause of the trouble.’

David sat up. His eyes rolled, showing the whites. He glanced fearfully back in the direction of the valley, following the course of the trickling stream that led to -

‘Back there …’ He had difficulty in getting the words out, his lips trembling. ‘Back there …’

‘What's back there?’ Sheila knelt down and squeezed his hand. ‘Something's frightened you, hasn't it? Was it a … a snake?’

‘No.’ The very suggestion that he might be thought to be scared of snakes had a calming effect. ‘I'm not scared of snakes. It … it was a man … all dead and … and …’

‘My God!’ Sheila stiffened.

‘Whereabouts?’ Alan smiled, trying to make light of his son's terror. David was not the fanciful sort. If he said there was a corpse lying around, then there most certainly was. Unless he had made a mistake. The boy had to be humoured, anyway, and his fears allayed.

‘A long way back there,’ David pointed, and his hand shook. 'Along the stream.’

‘I thought we told you that you were not to go beyond the second field,’ Sheila snapped.

‘Never mind that.’ Alan held up a warning finger. ‘Now, David, Mummy will take you back home. And I shall go back and see what it was you saw.’

‘It was a man, all dead and … and …’ The scene was before David's eyes again, the grinning mutilated body in the funny hat and skirt, the smell cloying in David's nostrils, restricting his breathing, making him feel sick again. He heaved but managed not to vomit. ‘There were flies and ants crawling all over him …’

‘Never you mind.’ Alan was already moving away towards the boundary fence. ‘It might not be a man at all.’

‘But it was!’ David screamed hysterically, and then Sheila was helping him along, back across the field.

The shadows were lengthening when Alan Alton clambered over the fallen Norwegian spruce and stared dumbstruck at the remains of Mac the tramp. Most of the flies had gone with, the approach of nightfall and the ants were left to enjoy their grisly repast in peace. They clustered around the bloody nostrils, filing in and out of the twin passages with a display of gruesome discipline. The sinew that had held the remaining eye had snapped. There was no sign of the orb. The buzzard which perched in the dead tree, a hundred yards up the slope, finished its tasty morsel and flapped off back in the direction of the dark forest on the skyline.

‘Jesus wept!’ Alan backed away. He felt sick, and he had thrown up before he had climbed back over the tree. ‘To think that David found that!’

He walked quickly in the opposite direction, not simply because he wanted to comfort his son as soon as possible. Nothing would induce him to remain down here after dusk had blended into darkness.

PC Jim Lewis was in his early twenties, with a limited experience in the force and little knowledge of rural life. He would have been quite happy to have spent his working life in and around the Black Country, and it was because of his wife's hatred of towns and love of the countryside that he had come out to the border country. The ease with which his transfer request had been granted amazed his colleagues.

Seventy-five per cent of them would have changed places with him, and it galled them all the more because it was common knowledge that he would have preferred to remain in Bilston.

Jim Lewis did not advertise the fact that his wife's mother was a cousin to the chief constable's wife. Not that that had had anything to do with his move.

At five feet ten and a half, PC Lewis had a boyish face that needed a short black beard to give it maturity and an appearance of authority. He was a heavy cigarette smoker and since coming to Shropshire his daily quota had risen from twenty to thirty. He had more time on his hands, and periods of inactivity had his hand straying to his tunic pocket for a much needed king size.

Seldom had he needed tobacco more than on the balmy night when he sat in the Altons' kitchen. He accepted a second generous tumbler of whisky. Neat. His hand shook slightly as he raised it to his lips.

‘Cheers.’ His smile was forced and there was a slight tremor along his lower lip. Briefly he recalled the axe killing in Tipton just six months after he had joined the police force. He and the sergeant were the first on the scene. Some guy had hacked up his wife's lover. Made a good job of it, too, by axe killing standards. The first blow had split the victim's skull in two, spewing brains and blood all over the wall. Then the murderer had gone crazy. Arms, legs, and head had been totally severed. The disembowelment was the worst part, guts all over the floor so that you had to watch where you trod. Jim Lewis had stepped on a length of intestine and nearly sprawled headlong into the whole bloody mess. The sergeant had just managed to catch him in time. Craziest of all was the fact that the guy hadn't made any attempt to get away. Once he'd finished his butchering he'd rung for the police. Just like that. Come and clean it up, chaps, and you can lock me up if you like. They had? A nutter. Well, for a time; just the time it took to joint up his rival. Then he was as sane as they come. Virtually got away with it, too. Extreme provocation. Seven years, less time deducted for good behaviour. He'd soon be back in circulation.

‘Nasty job,’ Alan Alton said.

‘Oh - er, yes. Very nasty.’ Jim Lewis was jerked out of his reverie. One horror replaced another in his mind. He saw the tramp again. ‘Must have been there for a week or more. We won't know until after the post-mortem. Not that it matters much. I don't envisage any problems. He obviously fell off the road in the dark, bounced all the way down the hillside and skewered himself on a fencing stake. That's the way it goes.’

The policeman took another swig of whisky. He had thought he'd got that room full of intestines and loose limbs out of his mind. He hadn't dreamed about it for weeks. Now he'd fixed himself up with another regular nightmare. The ants were the most repulsive part of the whole business, the way they revelled in their new-found home. He'd watched them working by the light of his torch. Callous little bastards. The old sergeant at Bilston had a favourite expression for those who leapfrogged over him in the promotion scramble - arsehole creepers. Well, the ants certainly fell into that category, judging by what was going on under that kilt.

‘Can't do much before morning.’ Lewis lit another cigarette. ‘I'll call up Ludlow and fill them in on the details.’ He was glad he was on ‘afternoons’ this week. In country areas the police often had to lend a hand bringing bodies up from difficult places. Jesus!

Sheila was upstairs with David. He had finally dropped into a troubled sleep, but she was concerned about him. Tonight he would share the double bed with her and Alan would use the small bedroom. First thing in the morning she was going to take him into Knighton to let the doctor have a look at him. One consolation about their move was the doctor, a man who had a wonderful way with children and to whom nothing was too much trouble. Such men were few and far between these days. All the same, her nerves were becoming stretched. That insect (Alan was certain it was a locust of some sort) in the bedroom, and now a violent and terrible death. The two were unrelated, but it was just too much for one day.

Already she was considering the prospect of leaving Alan. It was inevitable some time. Possibly the sooner the better, and get it over with. She could go back to her mother. It would be a case of ‘I told you so.’ But she could put up with that. It was better than this.

Lewis offered no resistance when Alan poured the remains of the whisky bottle into the policeman's glass. ‘Cheers.’

‘There's something worrying me,’ Alan confided, his voice low so that it could not be heard upstairs.

‘And me. That tramp for starters. It would take me until daylight just to tell you about the paperwork that's involved.’

‘My wife killed an insect today. I didn't see it because by the time I got home she'd already burnt the paper she'd crushed it with. But from her description, and she knows next to nothing about insect life so she'd hardly make it all up, the thing was a locust.’

‘You're joking.’

‘I wish I was. But something has eaten our Yucca plants and not even starving cattle will touch those. They've got leaves like swords and just as sharp.’

‘Is it possible? I mean, I'm not an expert in such matters, but I thought they only existed in hot climates?’

‘Generally speaking, that's the case. In a normal British summer they wouldn't even hatch, let alone survive. But this summer is an abnormal one with temperatures in the nineties every day, and it looks like staying that way according to the long-range weather forecast. It is just possible. Just.’

‘Hell. Have you reported it?’

‘Not yet. I only found out tonight, and I was on my way to have a look round to see if I could see any more of the things when I heard David's screams. After that, locusts took a back seat.’

‘I see.’ Lewis lit another cigarette with the butt of his old one, and inhaled deeply. ‘And what would be the consequences if there were locusts in the area?’

‘Who knows? It depends on their numbers, of course. And how quickly they adapted to Britain. Anyway, as soon as I get a chance I'm going to search all the fields around here. There's a plague of grasshoppers. Thousands of 'em, and big 'uns. The average person would probably mistake a locust for one of them if they saw one. And unless the locusts are recognized for what they are in good time, we could have a situation that would be out of control for just as long as this heatwave lasts!’

Jim Lewis drained his glass, eyed the bottle, saw that it really was empty, and stood up.

‘I guess I'd better go and make my report.’

‘Doubtless somebody'll be along first thing in the morning?’

‘Before breakfast. At least before mine. I'm having a lie-in … I hope,’ the constable laughed. ‘Be seeing you. Alan.’

After Lewis had gone, Alan Alton moved over to the armchair, and lowering himself into it stretched out his legs. He was tired. Exhausted. But he knew that there would be little sleep for him that night, and there was nothing to be gained by going to bed. His thoughts dwelled briefly on the Emmertons. Pat, anyway. He couldn't make up his mind about her. She was a challenge to him, but he didn't quite know how to go about it, whether to play his full hand or keep an ace up his sleeve. Some time, sooner or later, he was going to try his luck. He wouldn't rest until he had. First, though, there were more important matters pending, like getting that tramp's body up from the valley, and finding out if there really were locusts in the vicinity. Life was going to be very full, one way or another, in the days that lay ahead.

The smell of fermenting fruit hung heavy in the atmosphere in the old granary adjoining the house. A sharp, pungent, not wholly unpleasant smell. The sacking covering the crate had fallen off, probably dislodged by the passage of a hunting rat. Bold blue lettering was visible on the white wood: Best Quality Pennsylvanian Peaches.

A slight movement amongst the remains of the fruit, scarcely noticeable to the human eye - another insect, one of the last and still in the pupa state, pulling itself free of the peach with the aid of its strongly-barbed claws. There were neither wings nor antennae, and the body was a dullish brown, a wonderful camouflage in its surroundings.

Time passed. The shell cracked and split from the back of the head to the rings of the abdomen. Another labour of self-extrication. Tail and hind legs appeared through a vent in the shell. Then the wings unfurled; lastly the head and antennae emerged. In all, the creature was just under an inch in length.

It was positive in its movements, knowing exactly what to do. Short jumps. It made no attempt to fly until it reached the base of the interior weatherboarding and then it fluttered upwards. A narrow ledge, less than a quarter of an inch wide where two boards were ill-fitting. It alighted there, and waited patiently, as though turned to stone, the only movement a glinting of tiny red eyes.

It remained so for a long time, impervious to daylight or darkness, unaware of the passing of time, except for the mating process. Gradually the locust was undergoing a colour change, the body turning a deeper shade, yellow streaks appearing on the glassy wings.

It made no sound because it was a female. Then without warning it flew off, passed through the open door, and settled on a nearby tree, clinging to the tender bark. The claws went to work, raking a series of jagged incisions beneath where it hung. The eggs were laid in these, neatly, in tiny rows.

Some time later it flew away, heading directly for the forest in the distance. Its time was short - it would survive for a week or ten days. But its life's work was completed. It had done its duty, played its part in the reproductive cycle.

And its offspring would repeat the process. It was the law of Nature.

Chapter 5

Steve Emmerton sweated and cursed, the rolls of fat on his huge stomach spilling over the tight waistband of his working trousers. He appeared to shiver like a jelly in a dish every time he moved. His breathing was laboured. It was the heat, he told himself, not because he was overweight.

His spade scraped the concrete floor of the stable, scooping up manure and, in one coordinated movement, throwing it into the heavy-duty wheelbarrow which stood in the doorway. He wheezed and leaned on his shovel. You needed a B.A. to do this, he told himself. Years of study, a public school and university. You qualified, and then they told you there were no jobs available. Hang around, join the dole queue. Something will turn up. It had. Pat. Her old man was loaded, and she liked horses, so he had bought them a stables right out in the middle of nowhere. They advertised trekking and riding lessons. There was one snag; the local population was so scattered that you hardly ever saw anybody, and those who had a notion to ride kept their own horses.

But it didn't matter. A cheque arrived in the post, bang on time every month. Pat's cheque. Her father was a nutter whose hobby was financing failing businesses. Well, it wasn't a business really. More of a hobby. For Pat.

A brief spell of dizziness. It soon passed, but it worried him. Blood pressure probably. He had checked with a medical book. Maybe he ought to see a doctor. The idea didn't appeal to him. The first piece of advice offered by the medical profession was, ‘Get your weight down.’ Goddammit, he'd tried hard enough. A diet that was virtually starvation. Dieting, he concluded, was a waste of time. It was something to do with the glands. He'd had the same trouble at prep school right through to public school. They had really put him through it. Extra sessions of physical training, cross-country runs, rugby, all to no avail. Then, suddenly, his weight had gone. He had become almost normal, quite a good figure, in fact. He had been like that when he'd met Pat. She wouldn't have looked at him otherwise. For a while things went right, her father forked out, they looked after the horses, went for long rides, and screwed like a couple of rabbits trying to repopulate after an outbreak of myxomatosis.

Last year he'd started to put on weight again. Not just a few pounds. Two stones during the winter. He'd thought that maybe once summer came he'd lose it again, but he hadn't. He'd put another stone on since March.

And Pat was far from sympathetic. She showed it in a number of ways. It wasn't a partnership any more. She was the boss and he was the labourer. The same went in bed. OK, so he couldn't keep up the pace like he used to, but so what? There were other ways, but she wasn't prepared to cooperate. She'd thrown the copy of the Kama Sutra he'd bought on to the fire. Like their horses, she enjoyed being ridden. Hard. Until she was lathered in sweat just as he was right now, clawing and hitting him as her orgasm escalated. A bloody nymphomaniac. One thing worried him. Pat couldn't do without sex, and she was the kind who wasn't really particular where she got it. He had his suspicions. That fellow, the one who had stayed at the hostel for his summer vacation, and wanted to go riding every day. She had taken to accompanying him far too regularly. They'd been riding, all right. In the long grass whilst the horses grazed and waited. Steve had no proof, but he knew. But the guy hadn't showed up again so it was best forgotten.

Now that Alton chap from the smallholding down the road had taken to hanging around the stables. On the scrounge for manure. But he didn't do the hard work, like shovelling it up out of the stables and wheeling it into the corner of the paddock to stack it. Oh, no, he just drove down with a trailer, backed it up to the muck heap, and forked off as much as he could carry in about five minutes.

Steve had noticed the way Pat had eyed Alan Alton up from the day he first set foot in the yard. There was nothing strange about that. She gave most guys the once over, trying to imagine how much they'd got zipped in behind their flies. Nothing wrong in that. He looked at women's tits the same as most men did. Only with Pat it was becoming an obsession. He had seen the way she wandered out into the lane, looking down towards ‘The Granary’, trying to get a glimpse of Alton. And when she exercised the horses she nearly always rode that way.

He finished cleaning out the end stable, laboured down to the paddock with his load, and instead of stacking it he tipped it in front of the pyramid-like structure.

‘He'll have to fork that up,’ he laughed softly to himself. ‘or else bloody stand in it to reach the rest. Serve the bastard right!’

His vengeful thoughts were interrupted by a sudden neighing, a sharp whinnying that came from the far end of the enclosure. Hooves drummed madly, and Steve Emmerton stared in amazement as Ballad, the roan hunter, galloped into view. It was no ordinary canter, more of a stampede, head back, tail swishing, charging madly towards the hedge, checking, wheeling, then streaking away again in the opposite direction.

‘What the hell's up with Ballad?’ Steve muttered, and promptly forgetting all about Alan Alton, Pat's possible infidelity, and the labours of manure stacking, he began to walk in the direction of the distressed horse.

‘Hey, Ballad! Easy, boy!’

The horse ignored him, reared, almost slipped, somehow kept its footing, and began to race round in a circle. Steve watched, concerned and perplexed. There was something wrong. Then he saw them, a cloud of insects, humming, flying at a height of about ten feet across the field. Hundreds of them, bunched, occupying an area of about twenty cubic feet.

‘Hell's bells!’ He tried to identify the swarm. Wasps disturbed from a nearby nest? Horse flies? But they did not seem particularly interested in the horse. In fact, they didn't seem to notice it. They just happened to be crossing the paddock. But it had certainly terrified Ballad.

The horse's eyes rolled. It reared up again on its hind legs, pawing the air. For one second it was immersed by the flying creatures, and then they were gone. But Ballad's fear was not allayed. He tried to jump the hedge, foiled, rolled back, struggled to his feet again, and began another mad stampede.

Steve Emmerton broke into a run. Ballad had to be caught at once and calmed, otherwise there was the danger that he would inflict serious injury on himself. Everything else was forgotten.

Steve determined to head the horse off. It was leaping at the hedge in the other corner now, turning, running parallel to where he stood. The young man's speed belied his grossness. Ballad was heading right towards him. He stood in the way, arms, outstretched.

‘Whoa, boy! Hold it right there.’

The stallion ignored the command. It did not even appear to be aware of the man who barred its path. Rolling eyes showed the whites, flecks of sweat on its flanks, blind fear.

Too late Steve Emmerton realized what was going to happen. Ballad caught him squarely in the chest, sending him sprawling backwards. Steel shod hooves flashed. A sharp crack, the smashing of bone.

The horse cantered on, leaving in its wake a crumpled human form, the man lying there, not moving, his face a crimson mass. Ballad reached the far hedge. This time he did not attempt to leap at it. He halted, breathing hard. Suddenly he was quiet, standing there, a dejected pose as if he realized what he had done. The insects which had frightened him were gone.

‘Steve!’ Pat Emmerton's shrill scream rang out in the sultry stillness as she ran from the house. ‘Steve! Are you all right?’

She realized only too well that her husband was not all right. The very way he lay. The blood. Oh, merciful God!

She knelt over him. At least he was still breathing. But there was no chance of being able to move him. He was too heavy. And, in any case, you never tried to move an injured person. You could do untold harm. Even if that was already done.

Somehow she fought down her rising panic. She had to get help. She thought about the Altons. They might be out. They had no phone, anyway. The best course was to ring for the doctor immediately. She hated to leave him, but there was no other course. She ran back towards the house breathlessly. Her fingers trembled as she dialled the number. A pause. She listened to the ringing. Suppose there was nobody there, and Dr Denver was out on another call. What then? She had almost made up her mind to replace the receiver and dial 999 when somebody answered. A man's voice.

‘Dr Denver's surgery.’

‘Doctor,’ her voice was trembling, ‘there's … there's been an accident. A terrible tragedy …’

‘That's Mrs Emmerton, isn't it?’ Dr Denver had a knack of recognizing voices over the telephone, even distressed ones.

‘Yes.’ She struggled to speak coherently. ‘It's my husband … one of the horses kicked him on the head. He's unconscious. Bleeding.’

‘All right.’ The doctor was matter of fact. It was most important not to show his concern in his voice. ‘I'll be with you in about twenty minutes. Stay with your husband, but don't try to move him.’

Pat Emmerton dropped the receiver back on to its cradle. She was shaking and felt sick. With an effort she pulled herself together and went back outside. Flies buzzed around her angrily, but she ignored them. Her legs felt hardly capable of supporting her weight as she walked back towards where Steve lay. Ballad was standing quietly in the far corner.

A movement on the other side of the hedge arrested her attention. Immediately she felt a surge of relief. Anybody was welcome at this moment. Just anybody. She recognized the tall lean figure, knew the walk only too well.

‘Alan,’ she called. ‘Alan.’

The foliage of the hedge was parted and she saw the familiar bearded face of the man whose furthermost field adjoined their own.

‘Hallo,’ he grinned, and then his smile faded as he noted her serious expression. Beyond her lay the silent crumpled figure in the brown grass, bloody, not moving. ‘Oh, Christ!’

He began scrambling through the hawthorn barrier, heedless of the thorns, forcing a passage, and then running towards her.

‘What happened?’

‘Ballad kicked Steve. I've phoned for Dr Denver. He's on his way now.’

She was glad to let him walk ahead, hanging back a pace, afraid of what they might find. Alan dropped to his knees beside Steve. He grimaced. It was nasty, very nasty. But at least the big man was still alive.

‘Is … is it very bad?’ she asked in hushed tones.

‘It doesn't look good’ - he had to play it down – ‘but we won't know the extent of the damage until the doctor gets here. It might not be as bad as it looks. I always thought Ballad was a quiet animal.’

‘He is normally, but something must have upset him. I could see from the window that he was going berserk over something, and then when I got outside Steve was just … just lying there.’

Alan was silent. One thing after another. Less than an hour ago he had watched the remains of the tramp being loaded into the mortuary van. The police had only just left. They said they might be back later in the day. In the meantime he had hoped either to prove or disprove his locusts theory. Well, that could wait. There was no point in saying anything to Pat Emmerton now. She had her own worries.

‘We can only wait until the doctor arrives,’ he said.

They waited. Time seemed to stand still. A buzzard, soaring in the distance over the forestry plantation, moved closer. Its eyesight was sharp. It had spotted the body in the field and it remembered the one down in the valley. It had watched from the dead tree on the slope as the corpse had been taken away. Now it would have to search further afield for food - unless those two people moved away and left the one lying in the grass unattended. It had developed a taste for human eyes.

Alan heard the car first, and after a few minutes they saw the black roof of the red Marina hurtling down the lane, driving recklessly, dust clouds marking its progress where the hedges were high. Tyres squealed on the bend at the Fiddler's Elbow, and the driver accelerated again.

‘Here he is now.’ There was relief in Pat's voice. The two of them remained where they were. The doctor was getting out of the car, reaching across for his bag. There was no point in going to meet him as he could see them quite clearly from where he was.

They waited his approach, his swift step, hurrying but not panicking. He was clad in a white cotton jacket and grey slacks, tie hanging loosely as though it had been put on as an afterthought. Sleek black hair, greying at the temples. They noted every detail as the leading actor in the latest drama stepped on stage.

‘Hmm, yes.’ His expression gave nothing away as he knelt and examined Steve Emmerton, experienced fingers probing.

After a minute or so he straightened up.

‘The sooner he's in hospital, the better,’ he grunted.

‘Shall I go and phone for an ambulance?’ Pat Emmerton was already turning away.

‘There's one on the way. I phoned for it before I left. It should be here any minute.’

Dr Denver had hardly finished speaking when they heard the harsh wail of a siren, the ‘bee-bor, bee-bor’ echoing through the hills. An unfamiliar sound in these parts, one that heralded disaster to all who heard it. Even the soaring buzzard was startled, wheeling away, calling plaintively.

The ambulance drew up, its blue light flashing, two uniformed men climbing down, looking about them uncertainly. Denver's hand went up. They saw him - two hands, palms outward. A signal; a stretcher was required.

Alan and Pat stood back as the ambulance men arrived with the stretcher, the doctor giving a few muttered instructions as the unconscious Steve was carefully loaded on to it.

‘We're taking him to the Copthorne at Shrewsbury.’ Denver turned and smiled faintly at Pat. ‘Can't say what the extent of his injuries are until he's been x-rayed. You can travel in the ambulance with him if you like.’

She nodded, her brain numbed with shock, and began following the party back towards the ambulance.

‘I'll look after things here.’ Alan squeezed her hand lightly.

‘Don't worry about anything this end. I'm used to horses, don't forget.’

‘Thanks. And if … well, I'll have to come back here some time, whatever … What I mean is, there are no buses, I can't drive, and -’

‘I'll see to that,' he smiled. ‘Look, we're not on the phone, but maybe if I came back in an hour or two and telephoned you at the hospital from here, then …’

‘That'd be fine.’ She was deathly white.

Alan watched the ambulance move off slowly, pick up speed. The siren again, ‘bee-bor, bee-bor’. Dr Denver reversed his car and headed back up the lane in the direction of Knighton. So sudden, a panic-stricken horse, an injured man. Now it was all over - for the time being. The actors in this most recent tragedy had been transferred to another stage. Only Alan Alton was left. Hands deep in the pockets of his soiled Wranglers he began walking slowly back towards ‘The Granary’.

Sheila was standing at the front gate. There was no sign of David. Probably he was playing in his room out of the heat of the day.

‘What's going on?’ There was a look of alarm on Sheila's face. ‘An ambulance went by …’

‘It was Steve Emmerton,’ Alan grimaced. ‘One of the horses kicked him.’

‘Oh, no!’ Shock. It registered plainly. She was distraught, her nerves at full stretch. She was still reeling from the effects of the body in the valley, worried about David. He had seemed all right after a good night's sleep, but one could never tell.

‘I don't know how bad it is. The doctor wouldn't commit himself. I've got to go up to the stables and phone the hospital later. Maybe even fetch Pat back.’

‘I'll come with you if you have to go to Shrewsbury.’ Her reply was instantaneous, loaded with suspicion. A woman's intuition with a hair trigger.

‘Please yourself, I don't mind,’ he replied, as he went into the house. It shook him, made his stomach muscles tighten. They had quarrelled plenty of times in the past, but she had never been suspicious about him having it off with another woman. It was like telepathy, as though she read his mind, his fantasies. Damn it all, he hadn't made a move towards Pat. Just sized her up, the same way she looked him over. Sheila was anticipating events. It was the strain on her nerves, he told himself.

He thought about going back outside to look for signs of locusts but changed his mind. There wasn't time. He would have to get through his routine chores as quickly as possible because if he had to go to Shrewsbury that would take up the rest of the day.

‘How's David?’ he asked as he poured himself a mug of tea out of the pot which stood on the Rayburn.

‘Seems to be all right. But he hasn't offered to go outside today. He's playing in his room. Pity it's Saturday. I think maybe school would have been good for him; help to take his mind off things. I think maybe it would be a good idea if we didn't say anything to him about Steve. He's had enough horror for the time being.’

‘And I think he should be told. Not an issue made of it. No details. Just in the course of conversation. The boy's got to grow up with life, not a fairyland where everything comes right in the end. However, we needn't say anything just yet. Leave it until later in the day.’

Sheila stared out of the window. Damn it, she wasn't going to leave him just yet. No way. Not with that Emmerton girl all on her own just down the road. Steve might be in hospital for weeks. Sheila wanted to be away from Alan. Their love had died a long time ago. But she wasn't handing him over to another woman just like that. She might have lost her love for him, but she still had her pride. And there was David to think about.

‘The horse panicked’ - Alan dropped into a chair – ‘the big roan. Ballad. Something frightened him like he's never been frightened in his life. I'm convinced it was something he saw, something that came and went.’

‘Like what?’ She wasn't really interested in what had made the horse panic. The fact that it had kicked Steve was enough in itself.

‘Like a swarm of insects that he hasn't ever seen before. It could just be these elusive locusts.’

‘You've got locusts on the brain. If there are locusts about, how is it that nobody has seen them?’

‘Maybe they have, and haven't recognized them for what they are. In all probability they aren't around in colossal numbers yet. They would come into this country in egg form. They'd have to hatch and grow, then breed and multiply. Anybody who saw the odd few would mistake them for grasshoppers.’

‘But they're only harmful to vegetation. They don't attack people - or horses. You'll be telling me next they killed that tramp.’

‘It isn't altogether out of the question. They don't attack in the true sense of the word. They create panic. They will settle on virtually anything in their search for food. But at the moment I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I've no proof that they exist. And I just hope that I don't find any.’

He finished his drink and went back outside. The repairs to the fence in the first field should have been completed two days ago. Maybe, with luck, he could finish them today. It all depended on Pat Emmerton - or rather her husband. Alan went back to his work.

Half an hour later he cursed. There were no more staples. He had meant to pick up a further supply when he was in Craven Arms on Thursday. Somehow it had slipped his mind. The stores would be closed today. That meant postponing the job until Monday. Hell! And then a thought occurred to him. There was a lot of junk in the back of the granary adjoining the house. Most of it had been dumped there by Hatherton when he was converting the old stables into a house. It could be that there were some staples left over, enough to see him through until Monday, anyway.

Alan walked slowly back towards the granary. It seemed hotter than ever today. Beads of sweat dropped off his face on to his shirt.

Even as he began to climb the crumbling flight of stone steps up to the granary he was aware of the aroma. He stopped, wrinkling his nose, identified it. Rotting fruit. But there wasn't any fruit - except - a vague recollection of David sitting on the front gate, eating peaches, spitting out the stones, being reprimanded by Sheila.

It was gloomy in the outbuilding and it took some seconds for his eyesight to adjust after the sharp glare of the sunlight outside. Alan stood there. The stench was almost overpowering. Then he saw the wooden crate, the length of sacking lying on the floor beside it. The lettering seemed to jump out at him, yelling a warning of some sort, best quality pennsylvanian peaches. Something stirred in the recesses of his brain like a hibernating tortoise slowly realizing that spring has arrived. An idea, A link. An improbability - but still possible.

He moved quickly, picking up the crate, carrying it out on to the stone platform at the top of the steps, spilling congealed squashed lumps of fruit as he did so.

The odour forced him to turn away, take a deep breath of fresh air. Then he tipped up the box, unloading its contents into a soggy heap. God, it was vile!

He went back inside, found a piece of iron bar, and began to probe amongst the remains of the peaches. He did not really know what he was looking for. Just something that … well, something that didn't come from a peach tree.

Something hard. A stone. Several more, Probing, stirring, sifting. Something else, barely recognizable. Covered with rotten fruit. A shell, not a stone. He pulled it out with his fingers and laid it on the stone platform. The shell was partially cracked, spindly hair-like legs protruding from it.

Alan felt slightly feint and sat down on the step. Yet he could not take his eyes off the object that lay before him. It held a weird fascination for him, a kind of hypnotism. He saw and understood, tried to find a thousand reasons why it could not be. It must not be. But there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind now. For once in his life he would have been happy to have been proved wrong.

One of the locusts had not made it. But he had no doubt that thousands more had. Not only here in the Border country, but anywhere else where that particular shipment of peaches had been distributed.

Chapter 6

It was just after four-thirty when Alan Alton let himself into the Emmertons' house. The semi-darkness of the small hall was a welcome relief after the heat outside. The ivory coloured telephone stood out starkly in the gloom and for a moment he stood back from it. A symbol of fate: not just Steve's and Pat's - but his own. Sheila's and David's, too. He experienced a brief premonition.

He lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. His nerves were ragged. They had probably been like that for some time but either they were getting worse or he hadn't noticed it until now. The discovery in the granary had brought things to a head. His first inclination had been to notify the authorities. In fact, he had intended to do just that, but now he had changed his mind. There could be complications … for himself. Like finding Colorado beetles on your land. The men from the ministry turned your place upside down, enforced a quarantine. More than one farmer had been ruined in that way. Then there was the press. You were the villain of the piece. They had to have a scapegoat. And it was hard enough to make a living out of smallholding without all that.

If the locusts were here, as they undoubtedly were, then they were here, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

He hadn't even told Sheila. That would really have blown the thing sky-high. He was calmer now, formulating his plans without panic, knowing just what he had to do. First, find proof that there were locusts in the area. Then report the matter as an outside observer, one with a keener sense of observation than anyone else in the area. The press would make him the hero of the piece rather than the villain. He might even be able to sell his own story to one of the leading Sunday scandal papers. That would be nice, but more important it would provide him with a let-out. That box of rotten peaches was well buried in the compost heap behind the vegetable garden. Not that anybody would be able to prove anything even if they found it now, which they weren't likely to.

He felt better as he stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray. But it didn't alter the fact that there was a telephone call to be made. A very important one. He picked up the receiver and began to dial.

It was always the same with hospitals. Nobody had a clue about the patient whom one enquired after. Switched from ward to ward. Finally ‘Casualty’. Another delay. Are you a relative? No, just a friend. Ah, that's different, but they didn't say that. Just, ‘will you hold?’ They knew you would. Eventually, the usual answer, ‘comfortable.’ His wife? Is she here? No, not a patient. Visiting. I might have to travel over thirty miles to collect her. Is it possible to speak to her?

It was ten minutes from the time he dialled until Alan Alton spoke to Pat Emmerton. He heard her approaching footsteps after somebody had located her, the receiver being picked up, the sharp intake of breath. And he knew it was bad news.

‘Alan?’

‘Yes.’

A pause. The line seemed to pick up her trembling.

‘It's bad, Alan.’

‘How bad?’

Another pause as she fought to control her emotions. In his mind he could see her at the other end, distraught, her surroundings bleak and unsympathetic. Nobody else interested. A place where death was an everyday occurrence.

‘Even worse than I feared. About as bad as it could be - fractured skull, multiple fractures. He's still unconscious - in a coma. The doctors have … have warned me …’

Her voice tailed off. With one hand Alan fished a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, shook one out, held it between his lips. He juggled with matches in the same way, and drew hard on the tobacco smoke. He had to say something.

‘I'm sorry.’ He wasn't really. No more than he had felt sorry for that tramp. Impersonal, but it still left an impact on him, the instinctive human fear of death.

‘They don't expect him to … to last the night!’ Sobs. No matter how much of a failure a marriage has been, all grievances are swamped by the realization of finality. The end. It's all over.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

‘I can't stop here. I can't face it in this awful place. Can you come over and fetch me home right away?’

‘Of course.’ He understood. He would have done it for anybody, even a total stranger. ‘An hour. Maybe an hour and a half.’

‘Thank you, Alan. Oh, thank you.’

He heard her starting to break down before the line went dead. For some moments he stood there, just holding the receiver and smoking. Then he went outside, checked that all four horses were comfortable in the stables, and began to walk back down the lane towards ‘The Granary’, deep in thought.

He had almost reached his own gateway when something broke into his thoughts, an incessant background noise that had been there all along, but had only just made itself apparent to him. He stopped, listening, looking up towards the rich green of the forestry a quarter of a mile away. A harsh humming, rising and falling. It reminded him of the time, a few years ago, when they had had a swarm of bees take up residence in the chimney of their house in the industrial Midlands. A ceaseless noise of insect business which incorporated latent anger. They had buzzed their warning at him from behind the barricade in the fireplace. Don't interfere with us!

His stomach muscles tightened. He had to find out if his suspicions were right as soon as possible. OK, there had been at least one locust in those peaches. But had there been enough to start a population of the area? He didn't know. Locusts were, he had read somewhere, a species of migratory grasshoppers. In that case, were they as harmful here as they were in other countries? It was something he had to find out, and the forestry seemed the best place to do that. But first he had to go and fetch Pat Emmerton. Tomorrow he would take a walk up into the big plantation.

‘Well?’ Sheila looked up from the ironing board as Alan walked into the kitchen.

‘Bad news.’ He glanced around to see if there was any sign of David, but the boy was not around. ‘Very bad. His skull is fractured. They don't expect him to regain consciousness.’

‘Oh, God!’

‘I'm going to fetch her back right away. You can come if you want.’

She declined with a shake of her head, licking her dry lips. There was no harm in Alan fetching the girl back in these circumstances. But there was a stronger reason for her refusal. The association with death. Not just her own but David's. The boy had been through enough already. He was upstairs now, playing with a train set which he had seldom touched for six months, a total divorce from his rural playthings. It gave away his true feelings, trying to shut himself off from his surroundings. He had not mentioned his encounter with the decomposing corpse since the police had left that morning. But it was still very much on his mind. She did not want to have another encounter with death, even as remote as Steve dying in Copthorne.

‘You carry on,’ she told her husband, and broke off from her task to pour him a cup of tea from the pot on the Rayburn. ‘Drink this. There's no knowing how long it will be before you get another. How long do you think you'll be away?’

‘Search me.’ He shrugged his shoulders. Always timing him - subconsciously on this occasion. I'm going into Craven Arms to pick a few things up. You'll be back in an hour won't you? It was a habit with her, an inbuilt fear that one day he might not come back at all. Well, that was a possibility, but not right now. Now when there might be hordes of locusts, breeding, waiting.

He took the Maxi. It was low on fuel but there was about enough in the tank to get him to Shrewsbury and back. Somehow it didn't seem fitting to take the pick-up, not just because there was still a pile of horse manure in the back. It was too mundane a vehicle to go and collect someone who might be a widow before morning. Illogical, but he climbed into the Maxi and backed it out into the lane.

It was 8.15 p.m. when Alan Alton arrived at the Copthorne Hospital. Hospitals always unsettled him; the pungent aroma of disinfectants, everybody clutching at hope, even when it was futile. Impersonal. And always the nagging fear that one day you might be in here. Visitors were lucky. They could walk to freedom, turn their backs on suffering and death even if they couldn't forget it.

Pat Emmerton was waiting just inside the main doors, her face deathly white, her shoulders hunched, eyes that were red-rimmed where tears had stung and dried. She rose from the chair at his approach, her lips mouthing soundless words.

‘Pat’ - he wilted with embarrassment, pity for the girl, understanding, but not knowing what to say – ‘I … I …’

‘He's dead?’ She forced the words out, and clutched at him, burying her face against his plaid working shirt. Uncontrollable sobs shook her body for a matter of a minute or so. No longer. With a supreme effort she fought them off, and upturned her face to his, trying to form a smile on her trembling lips. ‘Ten minutes ago. But … but there was no hope. No point in lingering any longer.’

‘I'm so sorry.’ He took her arm and led her out into the evening sunlight, sensing her full weight leaning on him.

They got into the car without speaking. Both of them wanted to say a lot of things but there was no point. Alan started up the engine, the feeling of embarrassment more acute now. As they moved out he glanced quickly at his passenger. She was staring directly ahead, tight-lipped. Even in this hour of grief her beauty had not dimmed. If anything, it seemed more apparent: the slim curves of her sensuous body, the perfectly moulded features. Her head was erect, determined. Fighting.

‘I'm staying on at the stables,’ she said after a while, and now there was no tremor in her voice. ‘No way am I leaving here.’

He almost said ‘That'll be nice’ but he checked himself just in time. It would be nice, but there were a lot of bridges to cross first. For both of them.

‘I'll be on hand.’ He did not say ‘we.’ Already Sheila was not figuring in this forthcoming set-up which he was permutating in his mind. ‘Anything I can do, I'll be glad to help.’

‘Fortunately I won't have any financial problems.’ She ticked off the days of the month and knew that a cheque from her father would be arriving by Thursday, Friday if it was delayed in the post. ‘It'll just be a question of coping physically. I think I can manage though. Which reminds me: the vet's supposed to be coming next week to look at Victor's leg. Just a slight strain, I think, but you can't afford to ignore these things.’

‘I think I told you,’ he said slowly, his eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead. ‘I used to be a vet. I was a partner in the business Maybe I could have a look at Victor for you. There'd be no charge.’

‘I'd be glad if you would.’ She smiled briefly. ‘Mr Matthews is awfully expensive. A tenner just for looking round. I'll maybe give him a ring on Monday morning and tell him the swelling has gone down and not to bother. Funny thing, the horses seem very restless at present. They've been like it for a week or more. I think I'll keep them stabled out of the heat. What d'you think those insects were that frightened Ballad?’

He hesitated. He wasn't wholly sure; not sure enough to start a rumour that could spread like the fire at Knucklass had spread a few days ago, unchecked, creating panic. Neither did he want to invite ridicule. Another thing, this girl had just lost her husband. Talking horses was helping her, but was it wise to voice his own theories on these locusts?

‘Well?’ She turned to face him, and her eyes were boring into him, sensing something, determined to make him say what he was thinking. ‘Come on, Alan. If you've any ideas, let's hear 'em. We might be able to stop it happening again.’

‘I don't know for sure,’ he said slowly, trying to choose his words carefully, ‘I may be barking up the wrong tree. I'm no entomologist. But I found a dead insect and it's set me thinking.’

‘What sort of insect?’

‘A locust?’

She stared at him, but there was no ridicule in her expression.

Her eyes narrowed, and for a fraction of a second fear seemed to flicker in them. Then it was replaced by an expression of puzzlement, a slight wrinkling of her sunburned forehead.

‘That's funny,’ she said. ‘Tell me, do locusts eat anything apart from vegetation?’

‘I don't know a lot about them,’ he confessed, ‘but I'm going to do some research next week once I've had a look around up in those Forestry Commission woods. If there are locusts then that's where they're hiding out. Haven't you heard the humming, getting louder all the time?’

‘Yes.’ She leaned back in her seat. ‘I have. But you haven't answered the question I asked you.’

‘I've read some accounts of their ravages years ago.’ He was barely conscious of lighting another cigarette. ‘I remember reading once about a migratory swarm in Oregon and Northern California. They did about seventy-five million dollar’s worth of damage. They got into the woodwork of a lot of buildings and ate through the supports, fetching them down. And -’

‘Oh, God P she said beneath her breath.

‘Why, what's the matter?’

‘We've got a lean-to place in the paddock, just a few wooden posts and a tin roof, somewhere for the horses to shelter in bad weather. Well, half of it has tumbled down. Steve took me to look at it only yesterday. We knew the posts had woodworm, but the main one was eaten right through, not just rotted. Woodworm couldn't have done it so quickly, it would've taken years.’

He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles showed white.

‘D'you think it is locusts?' she asked.

‘Just between ourselves, I'm getting more sure of it every hour. I don't want to say anything just yet, not until I'm absolutely certain. Maybe I'll know by this time tomorrow.’

They drove on in silence for some time. The road widened, and began to rise steeply. On their left was another large expanse of forestry: Colstey Wood, part of the Mortimer Forest, its symmetry presenting a starkly unnatural landscape. Pat Emmerton sat bolt upright, the fingers of her left hand gripping the window winder on the passenger door, her right hand pointing upwards.

‘Jesus, Alan, look at that. Whatever is it?’

He slowed, and even as he did so saw the object of her sudden interest, like a small cloud above the deep greenery. Yet the sky was cloudless, and there had been no rain for weeks so it could not have been steam rising from a saturated sun-kissed hillside. Anyway, whatever it was, it was moving too fast for clouds or steam. A blot in the sky. Extensive. Speeding northwards. And then it was lost behind the horizon.

He pulled the Maxi into the side of the road and turned off the ignition. They just sat there, staring up towards Colstey Wood. There should have been silence. Instead, the still atmosphere was filled with the sharp grating of millions of insects, and in the distance, gradually dying away, they heard a sound reminiscent of a roll of thunder, peals that never came to fruition as though the storm had changed its mind.

‘What is it?’ Pat Emmerton whispered.

‘Whatever that … that thing was,’ he breathed, ‘it made that noise. And now it's gone. A direct course as if it - or they - knew exactly where they were going.’

‘Could it be …?’

‘I'll find out tomorrow.’ He started the engine and the car moved back on to the road. ‘But don't worry about it in the meantime. By the way, what about tonight? I could get Sheila to put you up at our place.’

‘No, I'll be all right. Honest.’ Her hand rested momentarily on his arm.

He found himself wishing that he hadn't mentioned Sheila's name. In a way it had spoiled things.

‘You weren't away long.’ Sheila remarked as Alan told her about Steve's death. I haven't even finished the ironing yet. How is she?’

‘Bearing up.’ He lowered himself into a chair. ‘We'll keep our eye on her for the next few days, though.’

She made no reply, folded the last item of clothing, and then put the ironing board away in the cupboard beneath the stairs.

‘I think David had better sleep with me again tonight.’ She said.

‘Probably it's best,’ he muttered. A sudden sense of elation flooded over him. It surprised him, shocked him, brought a twinge of shame to the pit of his stomach. Hell, it was the first time he'd ever been aware of being grateful for the opportunity not to sleep with his wife. He hadn't had to look for an excuse. There was no need to feign sleep to escape sex tonight. A lot of couples began sleeping apart when they reached the latter stages of middle-age. They found all sorts of reasons, anything but the truth. Fred's so restless, you can't get to sleep when he's in the bed with you. Annie suffers from insomnia and often has to go downstairs to make a cup of tea, and she feels that it would be unfair to keep waking me. Both sides had their own defences ready. Lies. And they got round to believing themselves in the end. But when you hadn't reached forty …

‘He'll maybe be able to go back in his own room tomorrow night,’ Sheila appeared to read his thoughts.

‘If you're sure you want it that way.’ He could not keep the sharp edge out of his tone. Blaming her. Passing the buck.

She halted at the foot of the stairs and turned to face him, her eyes meeting his, holding his gaze steadily.

‘You're glad not to have to sleep with me, aren't you, Alan?’

‘It seems to me that you're the one who's rejoicing.’

‘Why don't we just be honest with ourselves for once.’ - She leaned against the bottom of the stair rail, suddenly very weary. ‘We're all washed up, Alan, and you know it as well as I do. The only reason we got married in the first place was because I was pregnant.’

‘We'd have got married in due course, anyway. It only brought it forward a year or so.’

‘I can't go on like this!’ Her voice changed, high-pitched, all the tension and frustration of the last two days boiling up to a climax. ‘I can't stand this place any longer!’

Alan stared at her. He thought of a number of replies but discarded them all. Moral cowardice. A kind of fantasy, hoping for a long time that she would leave him, and give him his freedom. A brief picture of Pat Emmerton flashed in his mind. Two women, alike in some respects, so different in others. He wanted to make his choice. And yet it was so different in those fantasies, overlooking all the obvious problems, only the sexual aspect remaining. And, of course, there was David to consider.

‘We've got to try and make the best of it for David's sake.’ He scarcely recognized his voice, a schoolboy mumbling to an angry headmaster that he wouldn't err again, promising the impossible.

‘I'm going back to Mother's and taking David with me.’ she snapped.

‘It's better that David stays here. It's a better life. Better schooling …’

‘He comes with me. No judge would give you custody of him.’

‘So we're going to the law, are we?’

‘If necessary. If you make me. But you can't hold either of us here against our will.’

‘David likes it here.’

‘Because of your indoctrination. You've made this hellhole sound like the promised land to him.’

She turned away, and he listened to her footsteps going up the stairs, stamping on the uncarpeted boards with temper. He wished there was some whisky left. Hell, who had started all this, anyway? He wasn't prepared. He hadn't had time to prepare his defence.

He sat back in the chair and lit a cigarette. It tasted sour. Everything tasted sour. The sweetness had gone out of life long ago. Another thing occurred to him. He didn't even know if Pat Emmerton wanted him, and this was hardly the time to try to find out.

David was in the valley again. Somehow the place had changed. A dead world where everything had withered and died. So still and lifeless, except for the constant chirping of the insects. Grasshoppers. Big ones that squatted there watching you with their red eyes. You had to be careful where you trod in case you squashed one. He stood there, afraid. Not afraid of the insects but of - They were warning him. An unceasing chorus, Go back … go back … back.

He couldn't go back. He didn't know why, but he couldn't. Some irresistible force was drawing him on. There was something somebody wanted to show him. He didn't know what or whom. Just keep going.

Even the fir trees had lost their leaves, the ground beneath them a carpet of dead pine needles. Everything was dead, except himself and the grasshoppers. The other wildlife had gone.

It was hot, but he shivered. His body was bathed in cold sweat. His feet seemed leaden, each step a conscious effort.

Another sound. Footsteps approaching, crunching and cracking through the dry grass and bracken. A fallen spruce barred his way. It seemed familiar, except that its branches were bare and now he could see beyond. A man was coming, head down, wearing a hat of many colours. A skirt, too, like the one Mummy wore, swishing around his knees. A ludicrous sight, but his laughter died in his throat. Nothing to be afraid of, but David was deadly scared. He didn't know why.

Go back. Go back. Run. Run while there is still time. The grasshoppers hummed their warning, their note changing to one of urgency.

The boy turned. His shoes felt as though the soles were fashioned from cast iron, allowing him to move but restricting his speed. But why run? What was there to be afraid of?

He half-turned back, looking over his shoulder, and then he saw it, the most fearsome sight that he had ever witnessed. The face, upturned, now, had no eyes. Just empty sockets, the skin falling away in strips, peeling off even as he watched. A grinning leering mouth. No ears. The knees below the kilt were skeletal, too. A hideous apparition, and it could see, stepping over rocks, following a narrow sheep track through the undergrowth. Arms outstretched, fleshless fingers flexing. Coming towards him. Coming for him!

David began to run, a clumsy scrambling movement that made little headway. His heart pounded madly, his lungs threatened to burst under the strain. A roaring in his ears. No, it wasn't his ears. It was the grasshoppers, cheering madly like a partisan football crowd. This was their game. They had led him here, warned him when it was too late, and now they became a sadistic audience to this bizarre race. Your life if you won. Death if you lost.

David ran as well as he was able, forced every few yards to look back over his shoulder. His adversary was gaining on him steadily. Something else. The whiteness of the exposed bone was changing to a darker colour. Moving.

The boy forced himself to run again. The thing behind him was a teeming mass of insect life. Ants and flies around the orifices, the remainder grasshoppers, two and three deep, perching on top of one another, grim passengers in this death race.

Then he felt them on his own skin. They were alighting from out of the sky, hitting him with an impact like rubber bands flicked at him in the playground at school. Stinging. Clinging. Digging in their tiny claws to secure a foothold. He swatted at them, dislodged some, but it made no difference. Others were there to take their place. The daylight was shut out as they covered his eyes.

A grim race, fugitive and pursuer covered with insects, stumbling on blindly.

Run … run … run … Too late!

Cold hands that squirmed and wriggled with their hosts gripped him by the shoulders, pulled him round. Face to face. Each barely discernible to the other. The grasshoppers noisier and noisier, excited, screeching for the kill.

Why, oh why? No reason. Just driven to a blind madness by the swarm. A dead man reincarnated by grasshoppers, driven on by sheer weight of numbers, held upright, each limb made to respond. Fleshless hands manipulated for the kill. Around the boy's throat, squeezing … squeezing.

Somehow David managed to scream. One long yell of fear and agony that even the insects were powerless to stem. Blacking out, floating in space, hands still pawing at him, but no longer squeezing. Kindly fingers stroking him, a voice from far off, soothing. A female voice, a familiar one. Worried.

‘David … David. It's all right, my love.’

Blinding light, but not the scorching sunlight. The bedroom light shining down on him as he lay there, his head cradled in his mother's arms, looking up into her pale face. She was trying to smile, but making a poor job of it.

‘What's the matter, my love? You've had another nasty dream, haven't you?’

He nodded, relief flooding across his face. ‘Yes. That man. He … he got me.’

‘The tramp?’

‘Yes.’ David winced as the memory returned. ‘He was all dead, like he really was, and the grasshoppers were crawling all over him. And … and me. Mummy, I don't like grasshoppers any more.’

‘And I don't blame you.’ She looked up as the door opened. Alan stood there, clad in shirt and pants, hair dishevelled, falling across his face.

‘Another nightmare.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘Is it any wonder?’ She clenched her fists, the nails digging deeply into her palms. ‘And he'll go on having them as long as we stay here. We're leaving tomorrow, David and I. And – aaaah!’

She was screaming, shrinking back, her face a mask of sheer terror. Alan started, looked past her, and then he, too, became rigid. There, perched on the sill of the open window, was a large dark-bodied insect, its wings shimmering bright yellow, the eyes redly reflecting the glow of the bedside lamp.

‘Don't move!’ Alan hissed. ‘Keep perfectly still. There's one of our locusts and I want it alive!’

‘Kill it, oh kill it, please!’ Sheila whispered, holding David to her.

Alan moved forward, his weight on the balls of his feet, a hunter stalking his prey, arms outstretched. The creature never moved, squatting there as though resigned to its capture, only resisting when powerful cupped hands encircled it, but by that time it was too late.

Sheila looked away, deathly white. David peered inquisitively, yet still fearful after his nightmare, the memory of these horrors fresh in his mind.

Alan paused in the doorway, transferring his hold on the locust, gripping it firmly by the wings. It tried to jump but escape was impossible. Going downstairs, he reached on to the top of the Welsh dresser and found a half full carton of shotgun cartridges. Tipping out the contents, he placed his captive inside and closed the flaps quickly.

‘That's it, feller,’ he muttered, ‘and first thing in the morning someone's going to have to believe me!’

Upstairs, Sheila hugged David. Both of them were trembling violently.

‘David,’ she whispered, ‘in the morning we're going away. You and me, right away from this horrible place.’

‘Where to, Mum?’ He had dropped the ‘Mummy’ now that his fears were lessening a little.

‘To Gran's. You'll like that, won't you?’

‘Yes. But what about Dad’

‘I expect Daddy will follow later when he's dealt with his pet locust,’ she lied. ‘Now, let's try and get back to sleep. I think it would be better for both of us if we closed the window even though it is hot and stuffy.’

Chapter 7

The Land Rover swung off the narrow lane and began to climb the steep rough track between avenues of dense fir trees. A different world altogether, the driver, a lean suntanned man in his early thirties, reflected. One left behind a parched brown landscape and entered lush greenery. It was cooler, too, where the fierce sunlight was shut out by the spreading branches. He was tempted to pull up, get out and relax for a short time, but instead his foot pressed down hard on the throttle.

There was no time to relax, not if one was dedicated to the job. A forest ranger had to be dedicated, otherwise he did not operate efficiently. The hours were long, summer and winter. From October onwards Peter Ditton spent three or four hours each night patrolling for deer poachers. With the approach of the festive season life became increasingly more difficult as the Christmas tree and holly thieves went into action. Then, with a drought such as this (he sweated as he recalled 1976), life became a constant cycle of fire patrols. Sundays were the worst times, when the picnickers came out from the towns. The Forestry Commission just did not have enough men to cover their vast acreage in the border hills so he was called upon to help out.

He had had no sleep the previous night. The Bryncalid plantation was still blazing now. From the top of Black Hill he would be able to see the smoke pall blackening the western sky. The fire brigade hoped to have it under control by Monday. He thought that more likely it would be Tuesday. And if a blaze started on Black Hill they would be stretched to the very limit.

Ditton changed down to second gear in order to take the sharp hairpin bend. The rough road was now steep and narrow, a direct course to the very top of the wooded hill. The yellow Labrador lay on the seat beside him, head resting on its paws, panting steadily, saliva dripping from its mouth. The ranger patted its head with his left hand.

‘Too hot for you, isn't it, old son?’ He spoke sympathetically, ruffling the animal's hair. ‘And a bloody sight too hot for me, too. Even at this early hour.’

The road levelled out, and the Land Rover came to a halt, its engine ticking over. A kind of crossroads, a wide firebreak intersecting. Something attracted the man's attention, made him stare in puzzlement, unable to make his mind up what it was that was different. Not just different; wrong. A familiar enough scene, yet for some inexplicable reason it did not blend in with the combined planning of the Forestry Commission and Nature herself. The mixed Norwegian spruce and Scots pine were a lush dark green, virtually impervious to drought, the wide rides were - Ditton whistled tunelessly, a sharp expelling of breath. Jesus Christ!

He knew what was wrong but he did not understand why. Those rides which crossed the road on either side and carried on out of sight to the north and south ... they were totally devoid of any vegetation! For the greater part of the day they were shaded by the trees from the direct rays of the sun. In parts, during prolonged spells of dry weather, they would undoubtedly become scorched and brown. Some of the grass would wither and die. But not the lot. And even if it did, then the dead vegetation would still be in evidence, some of it recovering when the rains came.

Peter Ditton stared at the dusty track. The soil did not look natural, either. In some places it had the appearance of having been harrowed! The earth was scuffed up, dry and powdery.

The ranger switched off the engine of his vehicle and climbed down. The dog, with a sudden show of enthusiasm, followed in his wake, sniffing at the ground.

‘What do you make of it, Kanga?’ Ditton dropped to his knees, running his fingers through the soil. ‘There aren't that many rabbits up here these days, and, anyway, there's no footmarks. They'd show up sure enough in this.’

The Labrador whined softly, nosing to and fro. Ditton watched it carefully, knowing the animal's characteristics. Circular motions with the tail indicated rabbit scent, straightforward wagging meant that there had been pheasants or partridges in the vicinity. Kanga signified neither. Instead, the tail was low, almost between the legs in a cringing posture. Hackles rose quickly, and the dog gave a low whine.

‘Now, what the devil's up with you, boy? Go, seek 'em out, whatever they are.’

Kanga looked back at his master, ears flat, for once unwilling to follow a scent. He whined again, and then gave a low growl.

‘Get on, seek 'em out!’ The ranger was becoming annoyed. His dog was a trained animal, a gundog. It knew better than to disobey. Ditton picked up a small stone and flung it hard into the adjacent plantation, hearing it bounce off a tree trunk and roll along the ground. ‘Get in there, Kanga!’

Kanga hesitated, and then, slowly, glancing back at its master, moved into the trees. Peter Ditton stood there, listening to its progress as it forced its way through a mass of low fir branches, some of them snapping beneath its weight. He leaned back against the Land Rover, frowning, trying to figure out the cause of the disappearance of the grass from the rides. It wasn't rabbits. Nor was it any other animal, for whatever had grazed here would have left its tracks. Birds? Wood pigeons, even in a drought, would not resort to such a thorough clean up. Nor rooks, nor any other members of the corvine tribe. Birds of prey were carnivorous. A process of elimination that arrived at a negative answer. Something was odd. Very odd. The laws of Nature had been blatantly broken, and here, on a scorching summer's morning, it left him with a sensation of eeriness, a prickling of his scalp. He didn't like it one little bit.

He listened, trying to pick up Kanga's movements. Far away he heard the crackling and brushing of dry branches and undergrowth. Damn it, the dog was ranging too far. He was trained not to go more than thirty or forty yards.

Annoyed, Ditton reached into the Land Rover, rummaged in the glove box and found what he was looking for, a slim, pencil-like, silver-coloured metal object; a silent dog whistle, its high-pitched frequency almost inaudible to man but easily heard by birds and animals. He placed it to his lips and blew twice. That was the signal for Kanga to come to heel. Three times, at half-minute intervals. The dog had never failed to answer the command.

He waited, blew again. Thirty seconds. The final call. He listened - silence. Not even the noise of the dog's passage through the undergrowth came to his ears. He swore softly.

Damn it, if Kanga went missing there could be a lot of problems. Williams, the chief forester, for one. His orders had been that no dogs were to be taken on fire patrols. It might invoke the wrath of the shooting tenants if dogs were allowed to range freely in the woodlands. Williams turned a blind eye to Kanga. The Labrador was well trained and never strayed. All the same, he had requested his chief ranger to keep the animal in the vehicle at all times except when it was let out to relieve itself.

The farmers wouldn't like it, either, if Kanga roamed down as far as the sheep fields. Any dogs except their own collies were regarded as enemies.

And, of course, Kanga was a valuable dog. He had cost Peter Ditton two hundred pounds, partially broken. It would require twice that amount to replace him.

The ranger waited a while, and then blew again, two blasts, three times, at thirty-second intervals. He sighed, and crouched down on his haunches, his head cocked to one side. Only then did he really become aware of the insect orchestra, the continual humming, a grating buzzing, the sort of noise that would get on your nerves if you heard it for too long. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it before. Well, subconsciously he had, of course, but his mind has been too intent on other matters. But the sound was louder, as though building up to a crescendo.

Then he heard Kanga. A crashing sound. Yelping. Dashing one way, then the other.

‘Bloody idiot!’ Ditton swore. ‘He's chasing a rabbit. Kanga! Here boy. Kanga!’

Kanga seemed to be running parallel to the Land Rover,

Ditton thought. To the right. Then left again. Further away. Nearer.

‘Kanga. Come here, sod you!’

The ranger was becoming angry. He could understand the instinctive reaction of any dog which blundered upon an unsuspecting coney. The first reaction, anyway. But his own Labrador was a trained one. It had been schooled in a pen of live tame rabbits. It was instructed not to chase them. The silent whistle again. Three blasts, each one echoing his own feelings.

Scampering of canine feet. A sudden anguished cry. Anxiety gripped the ranger. Something was wrong with the dog. It couldn't be a trap or a snare because it was still mobile. A fox, a vicious creature that was determined to make a battle of it, kill or be killed?

He didn't know. The whistle was on its way to his lips again when he heard Kanga, much closer, heading towards him. Sheer relief flooded over him. Well, the dog was going to get a good scolding. No worse. He never believed in hitting him.

No more than ten yards away, still screened by the dense evergreen foliage, Kanga pulled up. Ditton heard his breathing, the short snuffling breaths he used during a retrieve when a pheasant or a mallard was clamped firmly between his powerful jaws.

‘Here, boy, come on.’ Kinder tones, encouragement might prevail where a scolding would cause the animal to hang back. Save the reprimands until you've got him firmly by the collar.

A brief few seconds of silence, except for that incessant grasshopper chorus. Kanga did not appear. He seemed to have stopped where he was. Exhausted after his efforts in the heat, lying down to rest a while, guilty?

Suddenly, the threshing and yelping began again, the dog throwing itself about, rolling over, growling. The ranger moved forward, bending low, forcing his way into the thicket. The branches were low and plentiful, obstructing every movement, forcing him to cover his face with one arm whilst forging a passage into the gloomy interior where no man had trodden since the forest was first planted. He made a mental note to check on the brashing programme for this area. It should have been done before now. Many of the trees were too close now that they were maturing, stunting the growth of others.

Kanga was only a yard or two away, still out of sight, but it was clear that there was something seriously wrong with him. Ditton began to hurry, almost frantic at what he might find.

Never had he dreamed of witnessing the scene which greeted him in a small clearing where a couple of spruce had died some years ago and allowed the sunlight to filter in. The dog was barely recognizable. In fact, he wondered at first if it was indeed Kanga, an almost shapeless crawling mass that rolled from side to side, a living creature … no, thousands of living creatures, like a mountain bear that has found a wild bees' nest and in its efforts to steal the honey has been attacked by the entire swarm, clinging to the fur, stinging viciously.

Only those things were not bees. Nor wasps. Nor ants. Peter Ditton stared, eyes bulging with disbelief. There were so many of the insects that it was difficult to focus his gaze on any particular one in order to identify the species. Then he knew, but his brain was almost incapable of accepting the answer. Had he not spent a few years of his early life in South Africa he might not have recognized the foe.

Voetgangers! A name that brought fear to those who heard it, a word that summed up everything. Death. Famine. That was what the Boers called them. Voetgangers. Infantrymen. Young locusts that had not yet attained the powers of flight and were forced to march like columns of soldier ants across the countryside, spreading fear and panic before them, leaving nothing but a barren wilderness in their wake.

‘Jesus fucking Christ Almighty!’ Ditton backed away. Locusts in England! And there was nothing he could do for Kanga. The swarm were not flesh-eaters in the true sense of the word. Sometimes they would strip the carcase of a dead sheep or cow if they happened upon it during a period of ravaging when vegetation was scarce. They caused death in a variety of ways. Madness. Panic. Suffocation.

He retreated, backing away, branches springing back and whipping him across the neck like a cat-o'-nine-tails. His floppy broad-brimmed hat fell off but he did not stop to retrieve it. Thoughts nagged at his conscience. He attempted to allay them. Maybe if Kanga ran hard enough and for long enough his hosts would jump off on to some green undergrowth. If there was any plant life left. They had cleared the rides in the immediate vicinity and probably further. And once they got on you …

Peter Ditton sensed the minute feet on his skin, the itching on his ankles, up his calves. He blanched, looked down. Oh, merciful heaven, the very ground around him was moving, like a tide flowing past him, cutting off his escape! He screamed an inarticulate blasphemy and swiped a locust from his chin. Some more landed on his bare arms, leaping down from his shoulders. Somehow he remembered in which direction the Land Rover lay. He had to get back to it. It was his only hope. He sensed the tiny bodies being crushed beneath his boots. Gulliver rampaging in Lilliput. Ten yards. It seemed an eternity before he emerged into bright sunlight, and at one stage he wondered if he had taken a wrong course.

Brief respite. A couple of seconds. The locusts were all over him. He knew that sweat attracted them, and they certainly wouldn't go short on his body! One brief glance downwards. He was totally unrecognizable below the chest. Squirming, crawling, perching in tiers, the locusts were devouring his clothing. The entire ride was rippling with them as far as the eye could see. They were on the Land Rover, too, most of them concentrating on the canvas covering, devouring it greedily, the sound of munching like crisp cornflakes being trampled beneath the feet.

Somehow he made it to the cab. The interior was crawling with them. He crushed three as he gripped the knob of the gearstick. For one terrible second he wondered if the engine might be clogged and refuse to fire. It obviously wasn't, roaring into life at once, a sound which drowned everything else, one vestige of sanity in a woodland of madness. Locusts were squashed on the clutch and accelerator. Ditton's trousers were saturated where he had sat on scores of them, both crawling on the seat and on his backside. Death in its stickiest, most revolting form.

The Land Rover surged forward, almost stalling, as he tried to grip a steering wheel that was a living circle of red-eyed wingless horrors. There were some on the windscreen. More alighting. Probably dropping from the branches of the trees beneath which he drove. These horrors had wings. They were adults.

He drove fast. He had to get help and raise the alarm as soon as possible. Also, the faster he went, the more of them he dislodged from the outside of the vehicle. Sorry, sir, the bus is full. No standing allowed upstairs. Move down the gangway, please. He laughed. It was a cracked frightening sound, and he wondered if he had already gone mad.

Ditton was reasonably familiar with the forestry roads of Black Hill. A vast circle, four miles in circumference, with three exits. One at Cwm, the way he had come in. The other leading out on to the Rock of Woolbury. The third was directly on the Fiddler's Elbow. He decided to try and make it to the latter.

Up steep inclines, downhill slopes where you had to slow, sharp bends where you virtually stood on the brakes; at this speed, anyway. He couldn't see the speedometer. The glass cover was obscured by locusts hanging down from the rim.

He drove with one hand and fought the creatures with the other, knocking them from his face and ears. They were writhing inside his trousers, irritating his genitals. He found himself urinating, a combination of fear and a desire to exact his own revenge on those which dared to infiltrate his private areas.

His eyes were smarting, streaming where tiny claws had raked. His vision was becoming more impaired by the second. Christ, wouldn't this bloody truck go any faster? The throttle was already pressed down to its full limit.

Something hit the windscreen with a dull splat. Tiny bodies squashed on impact. A pattering like hailstones on the bodywork. Ditton jerked forward, instinctively switching his foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal. Another score or so deaths, the corpses adhering to the sole of his boot.

Tyres screeched and skidded on the dusty surface. He had seen the bend and then it had been obliterated by a sudden brown opaqueness on the windscreen. Everything was blotted out instantly as the full force of the locust swarm struck the vehicle, a blast from a mighty scattergun. Glass cracked under the impact. Locusts poured in through the jagged holes, alighting on any perching place, two and three deep on the seat, covering the man, choking off his cries of terror.

But nothing could halt the erratic course on which the Forestry Commission Land Rover was now embarked. Had it been travelling on a level stretch of road there was every chance that it would have skidded to an eventual halt without leaving the track. Yet even as the ranger was applying the brakes, the front wheels were dipping on a steep slope. Worse, there was a sharp bend at the foot of it where the ground fell away steeply, each tree battling to remain upright as the roots endeavoured to secure a hold on the hillside.

The vehicle slewed on the bend, tilted, almost overturned, but somehow kept four wheels on the ground. It went into a spin in the loose dust; the front wheels locked and mounted the small shale bank above the steep drop.

Ditton writhed and kicked beneath a mound of his attackers. He realized only too well what Kanga had experienced, dashing to and fro beneath the trees in a vain attempt to dislodge the creatures. Sheer revulsion. Some of the natives in Africa fed on locusts. Ground them up into a kind of flour and made bread and cakes out of the result. Other places they fried them, ate them in batter, made fritters for afters. Ugh! His teeth crunched together, crushing a locust that had hopped in through his open mouth. The vomit was rising within seconds spewing out in a thick gush. Drown the bastards! He retched again.

A strange sensation in the pit of his stomach. A kind of sinking feeling, reminding him of the time when he had taken a course of flying lessons at Halfpenny Green and the instructor had taken him into an air pocket, just to show him what it was like. Intestines revolting, being thrown upwards.

Jesus, he realized now that he was actually airborne, the Land Rover rising from its makeshift runway, leaping into space, seeming to hover for a second or two, then falling … falling …

Ditton was thrown forward as the bonnet of the truck embedded itself against the trunk of a mighty twisted Corsician pine thirty feet below the forestry road. His head went through the shattered windscreen, skull splitting with the ease of a thrush's egg beneath the beak of a magpie, his throat gashed by a jagged sliver of glass. He knelt there, held in place by the vertical position of the vehicle, a victim of a slow motion Madame Guillotine, the razor-sharp glass slowly cutting upwards into the neck as the weight of the corpse pulled against it. Blood ran down the bonnet and dripped steadily on to the ground below.

Only the locusts were unperturbed, swarming all over the dead body, many not even dislodged by the crash. But they were living on borrowed time, their music an overture for their own funeral. Instant cremation was but seconds away.

Somehow, miraculously, the engine still ran. It made an assortment of strange noises, but basically it functioned as it was intended to. The stench of petrol was heavy in the atmosphere, choking fumes that drove away a few of the locusts perched on the remnants of the canvas top and thereby saved their lives. A few were still debating whether or not to fly off in search of some lush vegetation when the entire Land Rover was enveloped in a sheet of flame.

Sparks flew in all directions. The dry undergrowth, mostly bracken that had the colourings of autumn three months in advance, ignited immediately. Flames leapt high, spreading outwards, a gigantic funeral pyre in the centre of which knelt the blackened corpse of Peter Ditton, his features grinning grotesquely as thousands of his murderers were trapped in the burning cab. Then the weight of the charred skeleton slipped from its position, the glass severing the neck completely, and the head rolled from the execution block, a fiery ball that bounced on down the slope, scattering the insects that clicked like knitting needles in its path.

Within ten minutes the line of fire had extended to a hundred yards, working its way back up the hillside to the main Black Hill forest. Unchecked. Unstoppable.

Alan listened to Sheila moving about in the big bedroom directly above the lounge. David was up there with her. Occasionally the boy spoke. Her replies were mostly single word answers. She was busy packing two suitcases. And when that was done they were leaving. Just the two of them.

Alan wondered how she was going to find her way back to the industrial Midlands. Sheila couldn't drive, and there was no public transport in these parts. Still, that was her problem. It was David he was worried about, though. He did not want the boy to be subjected to the trauma of a hasty erratic flight from his home and father. Hasty? It had been on the cards for a long time, but Alan had told himself all along that it was just a threat. Now it looked horribly real. He half considered backing down. He could always say that he'd changed his mind and decided that it would be better if they all went back to the Midlands. Finding a suitable house and selling this one would take time. There was the chance to back out before contracts were signed, hundreds of reasons for doing so. Summed up, it amounted to stalling. But in the end something would have to be sorted out. It wasn't a solution, merely a postponement of the inevitable.

He heard them coming down the stairs, and glanced up as they came into the kitchen. Sheila carried both cases, David had a light holdall in his hand.

‘We're ready to leave.’ Sheila's voice was coldly impersonal, her expression one of determination. ‘I wonder if I could ask you a favour, Alan. Perhaps you would be kind enough to run us down to Clun. It will only take a few minutes and I'm sure you won't mind as you have the rest of the day to yourself.’

Hell, he knew that he'd figure in her plans somewhere. And if he refused, then she'd walk, and that meant David having to do the two-and-a-half-mile trek on foot as well.

‘And how are you going to travel once you get down to Clun?' There was a hint of sarcasm in his tone. ‘It's forty-six miles to Wolverhampton. Thirty-two to Bridgnorth. You might pick up a bus in Bridgnorth that will take you the last fourteen miles. I reckon that with David it will take you three days walking, and -’

‘We'll hitch.’ Her reply was arrogant, head held high. ‘There's plenty of traffic out of Clun in the summer months, particularly on a Sunday. I don't envisage any problems.’

His stomach underwent a sinking feeling. Defeat. There was no more to say except whether or not he was prepared to help them on the first stage of their journey. They would go, anyway. No way was Sheila going to back down, although he felt that David would have resisted had it not been for recent happenings. Those locusts, in his dream anyway, had temporarily blunted his love of wild places.

‘All right.’ He turned away, feeling his bottom lip start to tremble and not wanting her to see it. ‘I'll take you down in the Maxi.’

They were sticking close to him, even when he went to fetch the car out from under the granary, as though they were suspicious that he would suddenly disappear somewhere. Sheila, anyway. He hoped that his son still had some vestige of faith left in his father. Embarrassment was becoming a hobby lately. He experienced it now. How did one part from one's family in a situation like this? What did you say? I may follow on in a day or two. That would be a downright lie. Give me a call when you arrive to let me know you're safe? There was no phone. Only at the Emmertons', and Sheila wouldn't ring there. Drop us a line, then. Oh, hell. Just say nothing. Act as if you were taking them to get the train for a day trip to London.

Alan Alton's nostrils wrinkled as he stepped out into the yard. Woodsmoke. It should have been sweet and pleasant, something to savour. He had already made up his mind that they would burn nothing except wood on the open fireplace in the lounge next winter. Ash was best. But this smell that assailed him now was different. There was a harshness with it like a smouldering garden bonfire. He glanced up, saw the black clouds gathering on the horizon above the Black Hill. Dark evil smelling mushrooms, mingling together, spiralling upwards from the forestry plantations below.

‘Fucking hell!’ He stood there, transfixed, the full horror of a forest fire making its impact on him,

‘Alan I I've said it before -’

‘Look!’ He ignored her imminent reprimand for his bad language in front of the boy. ‘Look up there. The hill's on fire!’

Sheila and David stared, everything else forgotten.

‘I'll have to phone the brigade’ - he started towards the gate at a run – ‘I'll use the phone at the stables.’

This time there was no protest from Sheila. He left her there, still holding her suitcases, and broke into a sprint. The distance from ‘The Granary’ to the stables seemed like a marathon cross-country run, and by the time he reached his destination he was breathing heavily. He paused by the gate for a moment or two. A few deep breaths - get your wind back. Even in an emergency such as this he didn't want Pat to see him out of breath. It was all a matter of pride.

As he walked towards the house he glanced up at the bedroom windows. The front one on the right had the curtain drawn. It was little wonder. It wasn't ten o'clock yet, and when a girl has lost her husband less than twenty-four hours ago bed is the obvious refuge. Comforting. At least you can cry in private.

He tried the front door. It was unlocked, so he stepped inside. She wouldn't mind. The alarm had to be given.

That telephone, a symbol of fate still glowing threateningly in the semi-darkness. An instrument of impending doom. Once again his fingers trembled as he dialled the three emergency digits.

‘Which service do you require, please?’

He told them, fumed inwardly at the delay, but within three minutes the message was being relayed to the fire brigade. He replaced the receiver and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He was sweating heavily. Now he had to go back and –

‘Alan … I heard you talking on the phone.’ Pat Emmerton's voice drifted down the stair to him. In the background he thought that he could hear the gentle swish of water.

‘Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't want to disturb you, but I had to give the alarm as quickly as possible. The hill's like an inferno.’

‘Christ! I thought there was the smell of burning in the air, and that maybe you had lit a bonfire.’ A slight pause, then a slightly different tone of voice, hesitant. ‘You can come upstairs. I'm in the bath, but I don't mind if you don't mind.’

Jesus! Alan tensed, felt slightly unsteady on his feet for a second, and then he was moving towards the staircase, staccato movements like a robot, a step at a time. Something else, too, an instinctive arousement, an almost unbelievable thought that in one moment, when tragedy and disaster were uniting forces against the Altons and the Emmertons, fantasy was slipping into reality.

He stopped on the landing to steady his breathing once more. His pulses were racing. The door directly opposite was half-open, the room inside immersed in steam. He could see the end of the bath; the end nearest the taps. A small naked foot was resting on the side.

‘You don't mind, do you, Alan?’

Jesus! You don't mind seeing me naked do you, Alan? It'll make me feel better because my husband died yesterday and I'm all alone, and -

He stepped into the bathroom, and looked down at her. Pat Emmerton was languishing in a bath that was barely half full of water. He got the impression that she'd been like that for some time, but she couldn't have known that he'd be coming round. Grief had not stamped its mark on her. Her eyes were bright and clear, a smile on her full red lips. Her breasts were small, and just as he'd imagined them beneath her various blouses and tight-fitting sweaters. Perfect, the nipples standing up straight and firm. He followed her body down with his eyes. Flat stomach, not a vestige of surplus flesh on it, shapely hips, legs parted seductively, the one undoubtedly placed along the top of the bath for his benefit. He couldn't tear his eyes away.

He knew she was watching him - that same hypnotic effect on his loins, brazening the hardness, a blacksmith forging the shape, the solidarity.

‘My wife is … just about to leave me.’ Oh, hell, he thought, how bloody corny can you get. My wife doesn't love or understand me. I'm all alone. Lonely. Like you.

‘I'm sorry.’ She raised her eyes to meet his, but they did not reveal her true thoughts. ‘I didn't know … I wasn't aware …’

‘She doesn't like it here,’ he said quickly as though trying to get it over and done with. ‘She's going back to her mother. She's waiting now for me to run her down to Clun so that she can pick up a lift to Bridgnorth or Wolverhampton. She's taking David with her.’

‘That's a great pity.’ A pity that Sheila was going or a pity that she was taking David with her?

He dropped his eyes, not only to avoid her searching gaze but because he wanted to look at her lower regions again.

‘I'd better be going,’ he said. It is best that he did. This was one hell of a time to try for a screw.

‘Those locusts …?’ she asked.

‘I was going up to the forestry this morning,’ he grinned wryly, ‘but if I do that now I'll end up as a cinder. I'll have to take Sheila and David down to Clun first, though.’

‘If there's anything you need …’ she left the sentence unfinished, and her eyes went back to his. Christ! He swallowed and a little shiver ran up and down his spine. Big Steve's hardly had time to go cold yet. Her marriage was over. There could be no comeback. His own was still in the process of crumbling.

‘I'll see you later.’ He turned back and went downstairs, praying that his erection would soften before he got back to ‘The Granary’.

He paused in the lane to look at the smoke again. It was billowing upwards, filling the sky; soon it would drift across and obscure the sun which was still rising out of the east.

That rumbling noise. He recognized it instantly, the sound they had heard over Colstey Wood on the previous evening. A storm threat that never materialized, only it was nothing to do with thunder.

He stared into the smoky distance, shading his eyes. The black cloud seemed to be separating, one half of it staying where it was, spreading slowly, the other half moving away.

Fast. A direct course, north over the Rock of Woolbury, the sound receding with it.

Alan followed the locusts with his eyes, seeing the black moving mass reduce in size as the distance increased, then suddenly swerving, dipping, as if the leaders had come to an instant decision and had issued their commands. Going down, zooming vertically like fighter planes homing in on an aircraft carrier which they've suddenly spotted on the ocean below.

Seconds later only the smoke remained in the sky.

‘And I'll bet not a soul except me saw 'em.’ he muttered. ‘Nobody would believe me. They'd say I was ready for the head-farm. But wait until I show them that little bastard in the cartridge box. Then we'll see what they'll do about it.’

Chapter 8

‘That took you a long time,’ Sheila said, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, staring straight ahead, not looking at Alan as he climbed in behind the wheel.

‘999 isn't as simple as all that,’ he replied. ‘They want details, name and address, location of the fire, etcetera.’

He turned the ignition key. The engine whirred and died. He tried it again. And again. At the fourth try it stuttered into life. He reversed out into the yard. The car stalled. He got it going once more, revved the engine a few times and then pulled into the lane. Away to his right the smoke was thickening fast, the sun already obscured and, all around there was the atmosphere of approaching dusk.

He slowed down a few hundred yards further on, and turned his head to look again. The engine spluttered and faded. ‘Hell.’ He could have said a lot worse. He just thought it. This time the Maxi was determined not to start. After a couple of minutes he was about to get out and lift the bonnet when something clicked at the back of his mind. He glanced at the petrol gauge. Empty!

‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Out of petrol. I should have remembered to get some on the way back from Shrewsbury last night, but with one thing and another I forgot.’

‘We'll have to take the pickup then.’ Sheila was determined, tight-lipped. Annoyed too.

‘We'll have to push the car off the road,’ Alan said. 'The fire engines will be up any time now, and at the moment we're causing an obstruction.’

Sheila and David got out. Alan stood with the driver's door open, hand resting on the steering wheel. ‘Everybody push. Now!’

The car rolled back slowly, and a few yards farther on the nearside wheels mounted the grass verge. Hawthorn branches scraped the paintwork.

‘That'll do.’ Alan straightened up. ‘Listen. There's the fire engine siren. Coming up through Woodside.’

‘The pickup’ - Sheila was already pulling the cases out of the boot – ‘before you get involved in anything else, Alan!’

The three of them were barely halfway back to ‘The Granary’ when the fire engine appeared over the brow of the hill, slowed, and began to edge past the parked Maxi. Behind it was an olive-green Commer van, large yellow letters emblazoned on both doors: Forestry Commission.

The engine passed them and picked up speed, but the van slowed and came to a halt. The driver leaned out, a small man with thinning grey hair and a neat clipped moustache. His green denim jacket was creased and stained, and Alan's first impression was that his Sunday morning lie-in had been rudely spoiled.

‘Mornin'.’ The driver flashed them a brief smile. ‘You must be the chap who raised the alarm.’

‘That's right,’ Alan nodded. ‘I've no idea how it started or how big it is. I've a guess it's pretty extensive judging by the smoke.’

‘It looks a bastard. By the way, I'm Kevin Williams, Chief forester. We're much obliged to you for letting us know.’

‘Alan Alton. I live in that cottage.’ Alan inclined his head towards ‘The Granary’. I'm just on my way down to Clun. The car was out of petrol, but we can take the truck.’

‘If you take my advice you'll stay put. There's a bank fire down by Woodside. Some of the locals are fighting it but it looks like it's going to jump the road. Another thing - we're desperately short of men. Most of our own chaps are still trying to get the Bryncalid fire under control and it looks like they'll be there for some time yet. It's a question of one fire engine allocated to Black Hill until they can spare another from somewhere else. If you could manage to give us a hand, we'd be mighty obliged.’

Sheila and David were ten yards away, heading homewards. Her shoulders were hunched, and she struggled with one of the cases. The other still stood on the verge,

‘Were they going anywhere in particular?’ Williams asked. ‘I mean, you could get them down to Clun by going the long way round.’

‘It'll keep.’ Alan felt a sudden sense of elation, a condemned man hearing of a stay of execution pending fresh evidence. ‘They were only going to stay with my wife's mother. It'll do tomorrow, or the day after. If we can't get, we can't get. Let me just help them back inside with the cases and then I'll be right with you.’

Sheila and David were already in the house when Alan entered the kitchen with the remaining suitcase. All three looked at one another. Sheila's eyes were misty, and there was every sign that she was close to tears. Her bottom lip trembled, and she fought to control the tremor in her voice as she spoke.

‘So that's that,’ she said. ‘It all worked out very conveniently for you, didn't it, Alan?’

‘It was my fault about the petrol, but I couldn't help the fire.’

‘You were quick enough volunteering to drop everything to go and help out.’

‘We'll try again tomorrow.’ He dropped his gaze.

‘Something will crop up, no doubt,’ she muttered. ‘You'd better not keep the Forestry Commission waiting any longer or the whole wood will have burnt down.’

They watched him go outside, heard the metallic bang of the van door, and then the vehicle was following in the wake of the fire engine. Sheila sank down in the nearest chair, and closed her eyes momentarily.

‘Mum?’

‘What is it, David?’

‘When are we going to Gran's?’

‘I don't know, love. You wouldn't really mind if we didn't would you?’

‘Not really. I don't mind staying here so long as I don't have any more bad dreams.’

‘Maybe you won't if you try to think about nice things when you're going to sleep.’

‘I don't like grasshoppers any more, Mummy. Do you think it's right what Daddy says, about locusts?’

‘I really don't know, David.’

‘Mrs Hughes at school says they only live in hot countries.’

She wanted to scream, Don't talk to me about grasshoppers or locusts. I've bad about as much of them as I can stand. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, I don't know anything at all about them, David. Now, why don't you go and play with your train set for a bit?’

‘All right, Mum. But maybe if there are locusts, then the big fire will burn them all up. The grasshoppers as well. Then we won't have to worry about them any more.’

‘That'd be a lovely thought.’ She managed a smile. ‘Now, you go off and play, David, whilst I think about what we're going to have for lunch, although I don't expect we'll be seeing anything of Daddy for a while yet!’

The forest fire on Black Hill swept from the south to the north, travelling at an alarming speed, devouring mature thickets and scrub undergrowth with a rapacious hunger. Sparks showered into the sky like a bizarre firework display of Roman candles. Some of them extinguished in the air, others floated down to ignite the scorched bracken and spread the flames.

The fire engine was forced to follow the forestry roads behind the fire. To have made any attempt to intercept it would have been suicidal. Kevin Williams was already resigned to losing the big Caelogy plantation. That in itself was sacrifice enough, but once the flames reached the furthermost point of that strip on the northern boundary, then they would die out on the rocky sparseness beyond. But if they spread westwards then the whole forest would go, maybe even the lower woodlands if the blaze jumped the road at the Fiddler's Elbow. His orders to the firefighters were explicit. Contain it. Nothing more.

A hose was run from one of the small square artificial reservoirs. When that was empty there was a second. After that all that remained was the small natural pool, fed by a spring that came up through the rocks, and the level of this was already several inches below its average for July.

Alan Alton stood with Williams by the forestry van, some fifty yards or so behind the fire engine. Both men watched with a feeling of helplessness. There was absolutely nothing they could do. Even a token effort made to beat out the nearest burning patch with birch brushes would have been futile. Absolutely useless.

The two men smoked in silence for a while.

‘Wonder what could have caused it,’ Alan remarked, just idle conversation, feeling that he was expected to say something.

‘Could be any one of a hundred things. Too early in the day for picnickers, but you never can tell. Bit of broken glass with the sun on it, maybe. And, in addition to all the purely accidental causes, the firebugs are really having a birthday. I have my suspicions about Bryncalid.’

‘There's something you ought to know.’ Alan had been debating for some time whether or not to tell Williams about his discovery, but by the time they finished here it would be too late in the day to contact anybody else. ‘What would you say if I told you there were locusts in the area? Not just one or two. A big swarm.’

Kevin Williams raised his eyes, and regarded the other steadily, puffing hard on his short-stemmed pipe.

‘Any other time I'd say you were crazy,’ he said slowly in a soft Border drawl, ‘but right now I'm prepared to believe almost anything. Fill me in on the details.’

Briefly Alan told him of the happenings of the past few days.

‘And, if anybody has any further doubts,’ he concluded, I've got one of the little horrors alive in a cardboard box at home. Right now I'd say the big swarm are hiding out on either the Rock of Woolbury or Sowdley Wood. My guess is that they're using the coniferous woods purely as a roost, a sanctuary. They aren't eating the trees because of the resin content, but once they get really hungry there's no knowing what they'll eat. I've got proof of their existence. Now all I've got to do is raise the alarm.’

‘I'll phone the conservator at Chester first thing in the morning.’ The chief forester chewed hard on the stem of his pipe. ‘Doubtless they'll be concerned, but at the moment all available manpower is engaged in firefighting throughout the area. Tell you what, though. There's a world organization for combating the locust threat, and its headquarters are in London. I was reading an article about it in one of the Sunday supplements only a few weeks ago. They call themselves the Anti-Locust Research Centre, just to prove to everybody that they aren't in favour of locusts. They were formed in 1945, but how far they've got with working out a formula to clobber the pests I've no idea. Apparently there have been locusts in England before.’

‘The devil there have!’

‘Yes. In 1912. Worked their way across the continent and hopped over from Belgium. What the extent of the damage was, I've no idea, but it couldn't have amounted to much otherwise we'd've heard all about it. Oh, and there's another organization working against locusts. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, known as FAO, God knows where they hang out, though. I think your best bet is to try the Anti-Locust Research Centre. You'll get their telephone number from Directory Enquiries.’

‘The threat they present,’ Alan went on, ‘stems from how prolifically they breed. I don't know a lot about them, but I do know that their lifespan is no more than a fortnight. They rely on up and coming youngsters all the time. They may not be able to keep up the productivity rate in this country, but in this heat anything is possible. No doubt the experts will be able to cope with the situation. At least, once I've let them know, my conscience is clear.’

They lapsed into silence again, both deep in their own thoughts. The fire raged within its own confinement, a crackling of flames and crashing of falling trees, the smoke pall becoming denser by the hour, reducing the sunlight to a hazy yellow that filtered on to the scene. Even so, the heat was fiercer than before, and the firemen were forced to drop back another fifty yards. The range of the hoses was limited now, merely playing water on the tail-end of the blaze, saturating the embers.

‘If the wind gets up, that's it!’ Williams handed Alan a can of ale. ‘We couldn't even contain it then. We just get the hell out of here and leave it to burn itself out. You and I don't seem to have done much to help. It's always the case at big forest fires. You have to be there. It's your job. I asked you to come because … well’ - he grinned, embarrassed at his own admission – ‘I needed somebody to help me watch the Black Hill burn. Fire watching can be the loneliest job in the world at times.’

They both laughed.

The hours dragged by. The sky was totally obliterated by the smoke which was not dispersing, merely hanging like a thick fog, the heat suffocating, smuts floating down like flurries of black snowflakes.

‘Let's take a walk down the other end, away from the fire.’ Williams wiped his forehead with a smoke-grimed handkerchief. ‘At least we'll get a bit of fresh air away from all this. Funny thing - my chief ranger, Peter Ditton, should have shown up by now. I know he was going to do a quick patrol of the hill in the Land Rover early this morning on his way out to Bryncalid. The blaze must've started shortly after he'd left. I guess that's the way it goes in times like this. Fate kicks you when you're down.’

They followed the track for a few hundred yards to the south. Yellowish sunlight turned to the golden brilliance of a sunset as they left the thickest smoke behind, and overhead the sky was deep blue and cloudless. Below them, at the foot of a steep hillside, there was a distinct dividing line between the charred skeletal trees and the deep green of the unburned ones. A jagged scar which only the passing of time would heal.

They looked down on the scene. This was where it had all begun. One piece of broken glass, the sun beating down on it …

‘What's that?’ Alan pointed to the bottom of the slope. A shape had attracted his eye by its symmetry, standing out from the bushes, a crushed oblong structure lying on its side, four wheels uppermost.

‘It's a Land Rover.’ Williams stared, then the awful realization came. His features were grim, teeth clenching on the dead pipe. Mangled, burned, an unidentifiable heap of metal, but he knew what it was. Oh, God, he knew only too well.

‘We'd better get down there.’ He was already beginning the descent, skirting the patch of smouldering undergrowth, clinging to a bush in order to keep his foothold. ‘Keep off the burnt patches or you'll set your feet on fire.’

Alan Alton followed him down. There was a dryness in his mouth that was in no way caused by the heat. Nausea. He guessed what had happened, what they were going to find down at the bottom. He was glad that the chief forester was in the lead.

They scrambled along a dry gully. There were even ashes here, twenty yards from the nearest point of the fire. The death and desolation would stretch even further, the stench of burning driving every living thing to seek new quarters, maybe even a new permanent habitat. Fire and locusts, Alan decided, had a lot in common. They both left total destruction in their wake.

Alan's foot kicked against a solid object. Heavier than a football, roughly the same size. It moved, rolling a few inches, then came to a standstill, lodged against a piece of rock.

He glanced down at it, and the bile rose up into his throat Instinctively he was backing away, mouthing words that would not come, wanting to run. And run.

‘What's the matter?’ Kevin Williams turned back, and then he saw it too.

A human head! There were few of the features left to distinguish it but, there was no doubt in his mind that it had belonged to Peter Ditton. Just a skull, blackened flesh still adhering to it in parts, fat that had melted and then congealed giving the appearance of a number of cancerous growths on the face. Eyes staring, somehow retaining an expression of terror that was beyond mortal ken. No ears. A jagged neck, sinews still trailing from it. And somewhere up there on the slope, slowly cooking in the smouldering undergrowth, the headless body lay, undergoing a slow process of premature cremation.

Two men retched and vomited, unashamedly spewing in front of each other, clutching at a gnarled and twisted tree trunk for support, both wondering if they were going to pass out.

They didn't. Minutes passed. They looked in the opposite direction, neither having the courage to allow their gaze to return to that hideous skull with its sickening smell of charred human flesh.

‘We'd better get back and tell somebody.’ Williams wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Alan nodded. He saw again the remains of the tramp. The flies and the ants gorging themselves. Revolting. They hadn't discovered this one, though. Yet. How would you like your meat done, sir? Rare, medium, or …? Jesus Christ!

They started back, taking their time, legs that felt like jelly having difficulty on the steepest stretch. When finally they reached the upper track they sank down, staring westwards, away from the smoke and death, watching the sun begin to dip behind the distant Radnorshire mountains. Far away was a tiny cloud, insignificant, hardly noticeable unless you looked for it, scarcely moving yet seeming to change shape. Broad at the top, narrow at the bottom. A skull.

Monday morning.

Sheila and David were sleeping late, and Alan had no intention of disturbing them. They had already retired for the night when he had come in at 10 p.m. Ten hours ago. At least he had been spared the task of telling Sheila the fate of Peter Ditton.

Alan drew the kitchen curtains. Smoke still drifted from the Black Hill, heading northwards. He couldn't smell the burning but he supposed that was because he had become used to it. After all, some folks lived quite happily in close proximity to sewage farms, for the majority of their lives, and were blissfully spared the foul odours. Acclimatization. He called it self-saturation.

Some vehicles had gone by earlier. He hadn't bothered to look out. Those would be the green goddesses, the army's own firefighting engines with khaki-clad crews aboard. Well, they wouldn't need him today. In that case Sheila might insist on leaving after all. That would be up to her. There still wasn't any petrol in the Maxi. In fact, he had forgotten all about the car. It was still parked on the verge down the lane. It could stay there for the moment.

A faint scratching sound attracted his attention. He whirled round, and then the full horrors of the previous day were brought home to him again - all in one small 6 x 2½ inch carton on the Welsh dresser. The locust was active. Hungry. And but for the darkness of its prison it might well have eaten its way to freedom by now.

He picked the box up, made sure that the flaps were fastened down securely. Today was the day of reckoning, the day when he would inform the world of his discovery. And he would have to go up to the stables to make the necessary telephone call.

He looked at the clock on the cooker: 8.10 a.m. There was plenty of time. It was unlikely that the staff of any organization such as the Anti-Locust Research Centre would arrive before 9 o'clock. Unless, of course, they had an emergency service. It was unlikely. Probably they relied upon a telephone answering machine for calls outside office hours.

No, he would wait until after nine. He filled the teapot from the kettle and left it on top of the Rayburn to mash. Maybe Sheila and David would appreciate a cup in bed. Maybe not. An old saying: don't poke the sleeping lion in his den. There was nothing to be gained by deliberately embarking upon another stop-start day before it actually began.

Three cups of tea and three cigarettes helped to ease the fingers of the grandmother clock in the corner round to nine o'clock. Alan stood up, gave the cartridge shotshell box another glance, and thought about Pat Emmerton lying in the bath with her legs lewdly spread, especially for his benefit. It was time to be going.

There was no sign of anybody in the yard outside the stables. He looked up. The bedroom curtains were wide open.

The brass knocker echoed hollowly through the house like some huge gong in an empty temple of worship, summoning a forgotten race of people to come and pay homage to the god which controlled their destiny. He felt that way himself, summoned to kneel before Pat Emmerton and do her bidding … or simply to stand before her whilst she bathed, obeying her every command. Scrub my back, Dry me off. Oh, God, this was not time to start getting an erection. Make your phone call first laddie.

The same hall, the same telephone, a squat monster that beckoned him. He dialled 192. Directory enquiries, which town please? London. The name of the people? The Anti-Locust Research Centre. I beg your pardon, sir? The Anti-Locust Research Centre. Hang on one moment, sir. He didn't need psychic powers to read the operator's thoughts. He's either having me on or else he's some kind of nutter. Probably both. There aren't any locusts in England so why should they bother to research them?

The girl was back on the line inside a minute. He scribbled the digits she gave him on a pad by the phone.

‘Thank you, that's fine.’

Christ, they do research locusts in England after all. But we don't have any, except perhaps a few in cages.

Dialling again - ringing at the other end. A continuous purr. Maybe he was too early after all. These guys probably rank as civil servants and nine o'clock's a bit on the early side for them. Particularly on Monday mornings …

‘Anti-Locust Research Centre, London. Can I help you?’ A girl's voice jerked him out of his reverie without any time even to make mental apologies.

‘Er, yes … I want to speak to somebody about locusts?’

‘Which species, sir, and which country?’

‘I haven't a clue about the species but the country's England.’

‘I see, sir. Just one moment and I'll put you on to Mr Blade.’

He waited patiently. There were cigarettes and matches in his pocket but he wasn't in the mood for a repeat performance of his juggling act. A voice. Young, cultured.

‘Roger Blade speaking.’

‘My name's Alan Alton. Of … er … Clun. That's in Shropshire. I want to report a plague of locusts.’

‘Yes, sir. The exact location? Map reference, if possible.’

Jesus, he didn't bat an eyelid! Didn't ask in a bored sort of voice if there were a few tarantulas knocking about as well.

‘I don't have a map with me, but as far as I know the big swarm is settled in the areas known as Rock of Woolbury and Sowdley Wood, about a couple of miles south-west of Clun.’

‘Any idea which species?’

‘No, but I've got one of the little cuddlies all nice and snug in a cardboard box, and very much alive, too.’

‘Excellent. It's probably a migratory species from the southern states of America.’

‘Christ, that was a quick bit of deduction.’

‘Not really,’ Blade paused, possibly trying to light a cigarette for himself. ‘I've no doubt that it will be the same as the others.’

‘The others!’ Alan went cold, almost feeling the sweat breaking out all over his body.

‘Yours is not the first report, Mr Alton. There have been five sightings in all throughout Britain. The first the public knew of it was on the ten o'clock television news last night.’

‘I didn't watch the box. We had problems. A forest fire.’

‘Anywhere near the place where these locusts are?’ - staccato, urgent tones.

‘A mile away, maybe two.’

‘Which way did the smoke drift?’

‘Towards the locusts.’

‘Hell! That's unfortunate.’

‘Why?’

It could cause them to move. Let's hope that it hasn't. Now, if you could give me some directions on how to find you, I'll try and be with you later in the day. I'll have to come myself. We're a bit thin on the ground here, and if there are any more sightings I'm afraid they'll have to wait.’

Briefly, quickly, Alan gave his directions by road.

‘OK. Thanks, Mr Alton, I'm sure I'll have no difficulty. With luck, I'll see you about two o'clock, sooner if I can make it. Oh, and one word of advice. If you can keep all this to yourself I should be very much obliged. That televised report last night was most unfortunate. In some areas the public are reacting badly, panicking.’

‘OK. See you this afternoon.’ Alan replaced the receiver.

His hands shook as he found a cigarette and lit it. He needed the tobacco to steady his nerves. Suddenly this locust business was expanding to enormous proportions, and he didn't like the sound of it one little bit.

Chapter 9

Tommy Hatherton was not in the least concerned that the Black Hill was on fire. That was the Forestry Commission's worry, and although two of his own fields bordered the woodlands on the eastern side of the hill, they were nothing but sparse pastureland. The fire was not likely to spread on to his own land and that was all that mattered to him.

As he drove down the lanes in the direction of the lower fields where his seed barley grew, he watched the pall of smoke hanging in the sky. Smoke was still rising behind the horizon and mingling with it. He laughed softly to himself. It would be a week before they put that lot out. He recalled the last time the Black Hill had burned, early in 1940. He had been a teenager then, working this same land for his father. There had been no forest up there in those days, just hundreds of acres of heather. But they had burned with the same intensity with which the Black Hill blazed today. Rumour had it that it was arson, the fire started by a local farmer in an attempt to drive the hordes of rabbits from the heather. It hadn't done much good. An ugly blackened landscape that took nearly two years to grow again, and then the rabbits came back. Thousands of them, more than ever before. Funny, you can't beat Nature. You can win a few temporary skirmishes, but in the end the law of the wild triumphs. Like myxomatosis. Man thought he'd dealt the rabbit the killer blow, but they came back at the finish, just as they had done on the Black Hill after the fire. No, sir, you're fighting a losing battle. If the pests come, they come. The greenfly and the blackfly in 1976. Even the ladybirds, in their millions, couldn't shift them.

His train of thought switched to the Altons. A funny couple. Fancy coming out here into the back of nowhere when they'd got a good veterinary practice in the Midlands. Crazy. But it takes all sorts. They'd obviously had a bit of money put by because they'd paid for ‘The Granary’ outright. Probably their savings were boosted by Alton selling his share in the practice. Now, with everything paid up, no mortgage or debts, they were trying to pay their way with the smallholding. It wouldn't work. Not up here, and certainly not in a drought like this. It would take a couple of years for the land to recover from it.

Hatherton was worried about his seed barley. He'd been concerned about it for weeks now. The earliest harvest on record, certainly within the next fortnight, but the yield would be small. The profit margin would be lower than a good harvest on ordinary barley.

He pulled up, left the engine running, and climbed down to open the gate. That was when he was first aware that something was drastically wrong. There was no gate, not even the solid posts which his grandfather bad put in shortly after the First World War! Rusty iron staples and hinges lay on the ground.

He stared into the field. There should have been twelve acres of golden barley. There was none. Not a single blade! Instead, the ground was an expanse of dark moving objects, millions of grasshopper-like insects with yellow striped wings, inches deep, their noise a hum like a gigantic electric motor.

He backed away. The hedges had disappeared, too, except in one place where there was a length of some thirty yards left, and he wasn't even sure if that was a hedge or not. Obviously something still existed beneath the wall of feeding creatures, but soon that would be gone as well.

Tommy Hatherton did not understand what he saw in front of him in the field. It was beyond his ken, and it frightened him. He had no idea what these hordes of pests were, but one thing was certain. His entire seed barley crop, his hedges, and the gate had been devoured. That added up to a considerable loss.

The nearest insects were no more than ten yards from him. They appeared to be oblivious of his presence, crawling over one another in a desperate search for food, the lower ones scratching down into the sun-baked soil in an attempt to dig up the roots of the barley now that the top growth was gone.

Tommy Hatherton watched white-faced for a minute or so. Then, with agility that belied his years, he leaped back into the truck, slammed it into reverse, and shot back across the lane. The gears crashed again, and he was away, speeding recklessly back in the direction of the farmhouse, ignoring the possibility of oncoming traffic on the bends.

He braked to a halt. He was shaking, incapable of logical thinking. Nothing was logical. Hordes of things had ravaged his crops. He might even go bankrupt. But he had to get help. He didn't know what the insects were or what they might do.

‘What's the matter, Tom?' His wife appeared in the kitchen doorway as he ran into the house.

‘Dunno,’ he grunted, pushing past her, making for the telephone in the small hallway. ‘But they've eaten the barley. All of it.’

‘What've eaten the barley? Rabbits?’

‘Naw. Dunno what they are.’

She stood watching him as his thick fingers struggled with the dial. There was only one number Tommy Hatherton called when he was in difficulties. The National Farmers' Union. All his insurances were with them. That was the most important thing, that he did not lose out financially.

‘Hatherton here,’ he blurted out when someone answered at the other end. ‘Yes, Frank. It's me. Terrible. The seed barley's all gone. They're eatin' it now. No. I don't know what they are. Like … like grasshoppers.’

The NFU officer sucked in his breath. He knew Hatherton well. The farmer was realistic, practical. Knew virtually all there was to know about his own type of farming and had proved a few people wrong into the bargain. Like in the case of growing seed barley. He was familiar with pests and pesticides, too. And if Tommy Hatherton said that there was a plague of grasshoppers eating his barley then that was exactly what was happening.

‘Look.’ The official closed his eyes, sought some way to pass the buck, and found it. ‘I think the best thing you can do is to ring the insect pest officer at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Wolverhampton. He's the best man to talk to. He'll know what they are, and -.' A sudden horrible thought crossed his mind. ‘By the way, did you see the news on television last night?’

‘Eh? No. No time to watch it.’

‘Oh, nothing to worry about, I shouldn't think.’ It bloody well was something to worry about, Robertson, the NFU manager and representative, was certain in his own mind now what was happening. It was frightening. Terrifying. But he wasn't going to involve himself. Let the man from Agriculture and Fisheries sort it out. If anybody could sort it out. ‘Yes, you ring Wolverhampton, Mr Hatherton.’

Tommy Hatherton dialled again, puffing out his cheeks, a habit of his when he was either annoyed or perplexed. Stupid buggers. He could be here all morning being passed from one official department to another whilst those … grasshoppers? - devoured everything on his land. Not that there was much left. The barley was gone. The grass was virtually all burnt up by the sun, anyway. But if the rest of the hedges went then that would mean a massive re-fencing programme. And fencing was expensive.

Surprisingly, it took him less than a couple of minutes to get through to the insect pest department. The pest officer was on the other line. Hatherton spoke to his assistant.

‘Yes, sir.’ The young man sounded concerned, but remained noncommittal. ‘I understand, sir. Look, the matter has already been reported in your area. One of your neighbours, a Mr Alton. There's a gentleman from London, a Mr Blade, already on his way to see Mr Alton. Our own representatives will be down later today, also. In the meantime, don't attempt to interfere with these creatures.’

‘But what the devil are they?' Tommy Hatherton gave way to his built-up frustration and bellowed into the mouthpiece.

‘We can't be sure, sir, until we've had an expert opinion, but we may reasonably expect that they are locusts.’

‘Locusts!’ Hatherton dropped the receiver back and turned to his wife. ‘That's what they are. Locusts!’

She closed her eyes. Speech evaded her. The word had to sink into her brain, be processed by a human computer, then printed out before her: L-O-C-U-S-T-S.

She closed the outside door. Then she began shutting the windows.

‘Hey,’ Tommy began to protest, ‘it's too hot to have the windows shut.’

‘We're takin' no chances.’ She licked her dry lips. ‘I've seen these things on documentary films. They get in the 'ouses, everywhere, and they don't leave until they've cleared everythin'.’

‘But this isn't Africa or any of those countries. It's England.’

‘But they're here, and they've eaten the barley. Where are they goin' next, you tell me that, Tommy 'Atherton?’ She always dropped her hs when she was nervous.

‘I dunno. It's a point, though. But there's a man from the ministry on his way down today. Going to see the Altons. They reported it.’

‘Never 'ad the courtesy to warn us, did they? And we sold 'em the place.’

‘They aren't on the phone.’

‘No, but they got cars, and it isn't more'n a few minutes down the lane. Downright inconsiderate, I call it.’

Outside in the yard free-range poultry scratched and pecked, mostly keeping to the shade of the barns. A cockerel was perched on top of some bales of hay, watching his harem with interest. His eyes reflected his thoughts, but his energy, in the extreme heat of the day, was lacking. Maybe later, when it cooled down a bit. He'd feel more like it then.

Inside the house, Tommy Hatherton paced to and fro across the living room floor. His wife was busy in the kitchen. His frustration was building up again. Time spent indoors was time wasted. Even during the long winter evenings he found some odd jobs to do in the outbuildings. Staying here he was losing money. The combine harvester needed some servicing carried out on it. The fact that there would be no grain to harvest on his own land did not mean that it was not going to be used. There was contract work available on some of the smaller farms. Yes, when the insurance people paid up, and he had harvested other people's grain, he might just break even. He had to. The bank's lending rate had just gone up another half per cent.

He opened the front door and looked out. Tranquillity greeted him. The hens had stopped feeding and were taking their midday dust baths. The cockerel appeared to have lost interest in them.

Hatherton crossed to the old stables opposite. The huge squat head of a Friesian bull regarded him steadily over the bottom half of the door. A ton of latent fury, a bad-tempered creature that was a potential killer. A first class stud, though. Nowadays they kept it stabled. It was too dangerous to put out to graze. Lately it had learned the knack of tossing the chain attached to the ring in its nose over its head, leaving it unhampered to attack anyone who was foolish enough to step into the field. Today, however, it couldn't even be bothered to bellow a protest at its imprisonment.

Tommy Hatherton stood still, listening. A noise - a long way off. A kind of rumbling like the approach of a thunderstorm. Periodically, over the last few weeks, he'd heard thunder rumbling in the far off Radnorshire mountains. But it never came to anything.

Then he heard it again, this time closer and louder. Definitely thunder, and this time it was as though it really meant business. Rain would be a salvation, torrential downpours for a week. That would soon sort those bloody locusts out. Drown the bastards. And ease the water situation as well.

He looked up, and his first reaction was to seek shelter. The storm clouds were here already, speeding in at an alarming rate in a wide black line, blotting out the overhead midday sun. He never got time to ponder upon how a cloudless sky had become obscured in a matter of seconds. Sharp stinging pains had him crying out as hundreds of objects struck him viciously on all parts of his body; objects that hummed and grated and had yellow-striped wings. Chaos everywhere.

Locusts! By the million.

On and on they came in a never-ending stream like a driving blizzard, filling the air, covering the earth, house, outbuildings, hay ricks, with the noise of a continuous hailstorm. They clung to the walls of the farmhouse two and three deep, and streamed in through the open door.

Hens were fluttering everywhere, borne down by the sheer weight and numbers of their attackers, their frightened clucking and squawking muffled by a thick blanket of insects. The startled cockerel was knocked from his perch on the bales, landing on a soft springy bed that bounced him upwards like a trampoline.

The oak tree by the gate creaked alarmingly as though a gale was tearing at its roots. Thick branches were weighed down. One broke off with a loud crack and fell on to the writhing mass beneath.

On and on came the locusts, their appetites whetted by a feed of barley. Their hunger was at full pitch. They were not particular what they ate.

Mrs Hatherton was giving voice to her terror in the kitchen, hitting out at the creatures which settled all over her, trying to tear them from her hair. The room around her was unrecognizable. An instant change of colour scheme, symmetry gone. Darkness. The covered panes shut out the daylight. Total blackness, the noise deafening in the small enclosure, the woman lying on a floor that heaved beneath her, clutching at items of furniture that were horribly alive.

Not only were they beneath her clothing but they were eating it from her body - a noise like grazing cattle, magnified a thousand times. Tiny sharp claws scraped her flesh. Occasionally one of them bit her, but their prime interest was in the material in which she was clad. Munching. Crunching. Sawdust showered down from the ceiling beams above. Plaster crumbled and fell in chunks. Food cupboards were raided with an expertise which no experienced burglar could hope to match.

Outside, Tommy Hatherton had made it to the big implement shed, dragging a clinging horde of his attackers with him. His cap was being devoured on his head. Somehow he managed to drag the door shut. It made no difference. There were dozens of other entrances; badly pointed brickwork, timber that was breached with the ferocity of electric drills. Then they started on the implements, taking the wooden parts first. A few showed a preference for iron.

One isolated farm with no hope of help arriving except by sheer coincidence, millions of raiders not prepared to discriminate. They knew no fear - only hunger.

The Friesian bull snorted and pawed the ground. Its horns scraped the brickwork around it, and in one fit of madness it charged blindly. The impact sent it reeling back, rolling over, crushing thousands of its tormentors. Ten thousand locusts would not be missed. More were still arriving from the northeast.

Savagely, the bull struck with its horns, wheeling round. Its rump met with the stable door - which it had tried to dislodge without success on a score of occasions. Now, suddenly, it felt the woodwork give beneath its weight with a harsh splintering noise.

Freedom. It burst out into the yard, cantering blindly, trying to dislodge the pests which covered its eyes. It began to roll over on the ground, effecting another massacre. The pain was excruciating where they clustered on its penis and testicles, biting and scratching with their claws.

Mrs Hatherton could not breathe. Locusts were jammed solidly in her nostrils and throat. And every time she attempted to rise to her feet she trod on the squashed dead ones and slipped back to the floor. A world of blackness, a tiny solar system where all the stars were red pinpoints, flickering red orbs that were willing her to die.

She was heaving, then retching. But there was no outlet for the vomit. She felt it gurgling in her throat, burning hot. Slowly drowning her. Her senses began to slip from her, sliding into Stygian blackness. A roaring in her ears, a pounding in her chest, and even with her eyes tightly shut she could still see her mass murderers gloating over her helpless nudity.

Creaking, clashing sounds as they clambered over each other, as though jostling to obtain a better view of her end, vile harbingers of famine and death, the ultimate in obscenity.

Her last thought was one of shame, and as she choked and fought vainly for breath, she realized that they had seen her naked. She tried to close her legs. It was impossible. The wedge between her thighs prevented even that last wish being granted to her. Even her husband had seen her totally nude on only one or two memorable occasions: their honeymoon.

Tommy Hatherton was faring little better than his wife. He had crawled beneath the tractor and somehow managed to drag himself up the other side and clamber into the cab. He slammed the door shut. A dozen or so locusts were crushed in the process but the door jammed. No more could get in. Now there were only those clinging to his person to deal with.

He began to kill them one at a time, squashing them between forefinger and thumb, wiping the mushy remains off on his trousers. Ugh! Revolting at first, but after a few minutes he was delighting in it, a sadistic sense of revenge adding zest to his deliberate executions. The little bastards! They had devoured all his seed barley. The few would pay for the crimes of the many, and they didn't deserve to die quickly. Don't make it too easy for them, Tommy. Rip a few wings off and let 'em suffer, watch 'em crawl around the floor of the cab in agony, and don't be in too much of a hurry to finish 'em off.

He took his time. Not only the wings - a few legs as well. Really make 'em suffer!

Some of the locusts seemed to sense what was happening to them and began to fly crazily at his face, clawing and biting. He slapped them down quickly. One wedged itself in his ear and he had to extricate it carefully. He winced, remembering the time his mother used to poke in there with a cloth-covered matchstick to get the wax out. Bloody painful! Got you, you bugger. Now, how do you like it, wingless, legless, no antennae, just a revolting body? And you can lie on the floor until you die, damn you!

He struggled to take off the remnants of his trousers and pants in order to get at the survivors. One had crawled right into his rectum, and when he finally got it out it joined the other insect trunks on the floor. Hell, they were really screaming in agony. Two were stuck fast in his pubic hair and he was forced to crush them and carefully extricate the remains.

Finally, he reckoned he had accounted for every locust in the cramped enclosure. Hundreds more clung to the outside of the windows but there was no way they could get at him. He felt secure in here, and began pulling faces at them. They'd witnessed what he'd do to them if he got his hands on them. He'd showed 'em a thing or two.

He was safe. He laughed to himself and glanced down at his body. There wasn't any point in putting on what was left of his trousers or underwear. His shirt was just a few strips of material hanging from his shoulders. He cast them off. Might as well sit in the altogether, he decided. It was hot. Hotter than ever. Stifling. You could hardly breathe. But he couldn't open the door. That lot outside would really have him if he did.

Claustrophobia. He sensed it building up like a blanket being wrapped tightly around him. He was a prisoner. No escape. Oh, God, he might never get out of here! How long could you last without food and water? And air? Once he'd used up all the oxygen in here, he'd die. It was a terrifying thought. There were no vents, any slight air holes being clogged with locusts that had tried to get at him and become stuck. The sweat rolled freely down him and dripped on to the floor. He stared at the immobilized insects, and their little red eyes screamed a message of hate back at him. Bastards! But I'm not going to put you out of your misery.

He wondered how long a locust infestation lasted in any particular place. There was no cut and dried answer to that. It would depend on the size of the swarm, the amount of food available, and climatic conditions, Huh, the bloody climate! That was what had caused all this. If the place was as hot as Hades then you must expect to have all the devils to go with it.

Tommy Hatherton wished that he had been wearing his watch. He had no idea how long it was since the weird and unearthly cloud had dropped in. An hour? Two? No more, surely. Sudden hope. That fellow from the ministry was supposed to be looking in some time this afternoon. A lot of bloody good that would be, but at least he might be able to shout or make a noise and let him know … Jesus, one man was no good. They'd ball him up, too, and anybody else who happened along.

Time passed. He stared at the locusts on the exterior of the thick glass and they stared back at him. Mutual malevolence. A stalemate of a kind except that they had him trapped. Time was on their side. The air inside the cab was becoming thick and heavy. His head throbbed and there was a dull pain behind his eyes. He didn't know whether he felt sick or hungry. Were locusts edible? He'd have to be on the verge of starvation before he tried them. And that might not be very far away!

Suddenly, the gloom of the cab was becoming lighter. Daylight streamed in. Huge gaps amongst the hundreds of locusts perching on the windows. Hatherton stared. The glare hurt his aching eyes. Lighter and lighter. They were disappearing from off the tractor, swarming up to the roof, virtually queuing up to get out of the various holes.

And then it was all over. The only locusts remaining inside the implements shed were the dead ones. The farmer thought about opening the door, but hesitated. They might return. But where and why had they gone? It was as though each one of the insects had heard some silent order to retreat and had obeyed instantly, a withdrawal of the troops by their commander for some unknown reason.

He waited a few minutes, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the gaping holes in the upper woodwork of the structure. Daylight. Bright sunlight. They had gone all right.

He had to exert all his strength to get the door open, forcing it free of the congealed mass of locust corpses.

Hesitantly, he climbed down, looking about him, crossing to the door with stealthy steps as though he feared that they would hear him and come swarming back. He peered outside. Jesus! The place looked as though a whirlwind had hit it. Well, in a way it had, a living vicious tornado that devoured everything in its path.

The ground was littered with dead locusts, those which had attained their lifespan, eaten, and then died. Miraculously, some of the poultry were still alive. Four or five Rhode Island Reds were pecking and scratching quite contentedly, already seeming to have forgotten the invasion. They clucked contentedly, picking up the dead insects in their beaks and swallowing them greedily.

One mass of crumpled feathers lay still and lifeless. The cockerel. Whilst the majority of his wives had survived, he had joined the ranks of the slain.

There was not a single branch left on the tree by the gate. The front window of the house was nothing more than a pile of broken glass. There was no sign of the wooden frame. A number of tiles had come off the roof and lay smashed on the path.

Tommy Hatherton stepped out into the open. The sun was hot and powerful, and as it burned on his body he was reminded of his nakedness. The inhibitions which had been bred into him by the prudery of his parents now dominated his feelings. Suppose somebody saw him crossing the yard without any clothes on. He'd never live it down. People would think that he was a secret naturist, like those nutcases who had been on the television a few nights ago. He hadn't seen them himself. He wouldn't have watched even if he'd had the time. His wife had mentioned it, said she'd switched it off in disgust.

He looked to the right and left. The only living things in sight were the hens. Now … a quick dash across to the house. A streak! Get some clothes on and then it would be time to start totting up the cost of the damage.

A sharp pungent smell caused him to hesitate, bent forward, muscles tensed in preparation for his dash. Something was burning, a harsh aroma, like a bonfire in the autumn when they spent a fortnight hedging and burnt the cuttings. Odd wisps of smoke. Of course, the fire on Black Hill! The wind had changed direction. Not wind, really, just currents of air that were there even in the hottest spells. They had brought the smell of the fire and some of the smoke across the farm, and the locust myriads had fled before it. Thank God! Oh, thank God!

The Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night, and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts. The Lord turned a mighty strong west wind, which took away the locusts.

Tommy Hatherton took a step forward and broke into a shambling run. He had covered barely five yards when he heard the rumbling, the ground vibrating all around him.

Oh, Cbrist, they're coming back! He slithered to a halt, turning, almost afraid to look up into the sky. But the sky above was clear, a deep blue void from which the glaring sun hurled the full force of its heat at the earth below.

A drumming that came from ground level, a furious pounding of hooves. The naked farmer stood transfixed, seeing the hurtling black and white shape bearing down on him, the head low, eyes rolling with the madness of fear and hate for anything that moved.

The Friesian bull, unlike the poultry, had not forgotten its tormentors. It did not understand why it had suffered for the past hour. It only knew that it had to take revenge in some form; And it had always hated its master, its gaoler, the cruel ring in its nose, the sharp prods with the pitchfork.

Hatherton threw up his hands, Canute attempting to halt the incoming tide. A ton of solid prime beef struck him with shattering force, an impact which should have tossed him several yards into the air. Instead, the sharp horns smashed their way cruelly into his body, ripping flesh, tearing bone with the ease of a garbage crusher. The bull slewed under the weight, the body hanging across its skull, obstructing its vision. Intestines spilled from the gaping wounds, trailing like scarlet carnival streamers, the dust gathering on the ruptured guts.

The animal snorted, pawing the ground. More dust rose, but the farmer was not to be dislodged so easily. Hands waved feebly, a farewell to life itself, a gesture of despair and finality, and then flopped downwards. The Friesian's anger mounted. It charged madly, aware that the human buffer would stem the force of anything it hit.

A sickening, squelching thud. Blood spattered the brick wall of the implements shed, splinters of bone flew into the air. But the mangled corpse was determined to continue with the next event in this bizarre rodeo.

Back again. A skewered pulp of bloody humanity, some dead locusts sticking to it. The creature halted, breathing heavily. It remembered how it had slaughtered the insects in their thousands, and began to roll, throwing its body from left to right, rubbing its head along the ground like a dog with ear canker.

Finally, it shed its load. It stood back, looking down on its victim, but its anger was not fully spent. Horns again, slashing from side to side, biting deep, tearing, then backing off, seemingly satisfied.

Its fury abated, it wandered out into the lane, oblivious of the intestines which had wound around its bloody horns.

Chapter 10

‘Well, there aren't any locusts here now, Mr Alton.’ Roger Blade stood amidst the dying bracken, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his denim trousers, his wide brow farrowed into a frown. His dark wavy hair was immaculate, falling neatly of the collar of his dark blue shirt. Suntanned, he did not give the impression of a man who was constantly working in a laboratory on research.

Alan glanced at him. Did he detect an undercurrent of disbelief?

‘I can assure you, Mr Blade …’

‘Oh, I'm not doubting your word. I merely said that they're not here now. In fact, when I saw the direction which the smoke was taking I was pretty certain we shouldn't find them. I think the best thing we can do is to take a ride, round to the opposite side of the hill. The smoke has shifted the swarm from its sanctuary, and they'll be looking for a new habitat as well as food.’

Alan nodded. He followed Blade down the narrow path out on to the open fields. Below them, parked in the lane, they saw Blade's Range Rover gleaming golden in the hot sunshine.

‘There are more reports coming in all the time,’ Blade said as they walked towards the vehicle. ‘We're trying to form a pattern, trying to find a cause.’

Alan felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe the peaches were just one of the causes. There could be other factors involved.

‘Is the situation really serious?' he asked.

‘Growing more so all the time. Like a strike that cuts off supplies of raw materials. It builds up and up until everything grinds to a halt. Then, before you know it, there's a crisis. With this, as with a good many emergencies, the public panics. The greatest danger is famine. In addition to that, locusts can disrupt means of communication, disrupt transport, and generally throw the country into a state of chaos. The sooner we locate this swarm the better.’

They climbed into the stifling heat of the Range Rover, the upholstery burning their skin through their clothing. Blade drove slowly, in second gear most of the way, looking out of the windows, scanning the countryside to the right and left.

‘They can't hide for very long,’ he said. ‘Only in the early stages whilst their numbers are building up. After that they leave a trail that a blind man could follow, and I should think that your hordes are about reaching their population peak right now. I - Look at that!’

The vehicle was brought to an abrupt halt, and Blade got out. The field to their left was bare, the soil scuffed up as though huge rakes had been dragged erratically across it. Hedges were eaten down to the stools, one or two clumps of solid wood growth still remaining. Overall, a total absence of vegetation.

‘Well, we're not far behind 'em.’ Blade walked through to the field then dropped to his knees, examining the ground. ‘They've fed here today. A matter of hours ago.’

‘Hatherton's seed barley,' Alan grimaced, ‘or what's left of it.’

‘Let's take a ride further on. It's unlikely they'll have gone far. Probably only hopped on to the next patch of greenery.’

Half a mile farther on they saw the Hatherton farm nestling in a hollow. Alan glanced down idly at first. Something was wrong. The stillness. An appearance of desolation.

‘Hey,’ Alan snapped as they drew nearer, look at that oak tree by the farm gate. Something's fetched all the branches off it.’

‘We're getting warmer.’ Blade was already accelerating, swinging it through the gateway, bumping the Range Rover over a mass of fallen tree limbs, slowing as the drive widened out into the yard.

They saw the bull first, standing quietly against a drystone wall, flicking its tail in an attempt to discourage the flies from settling on its rump. It looked at the Range Rover, and lowered its head. An enemy. Its instinct was to charge, but the bull changed its mind. It was too hot. It was too tired. Unless the men approached it, it would leave them well alone.

‘My God!’ Blade saw the huddled heap of flesh and bone lying in front of the stables. Both men felt the nausea rising. Unrecognizable, but they knew what it was. Alan Alton closed his eyes. Christ, he couldn't stand much more of this.

The hens scratched unconcernedly. They had fed well. Their crops were now full of locusts and they only picked the odd one up, tossed it to one side.

‘Don't get out,’ Blade murmured. ‘Not with that bull loose, anyway. Never thought I'd see anything quite like it in this country.’ An example of what happens in other countries. They're killers. They obviously infuriated that bull; it broke out and gored the farmer to death. Has he got a wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then in all probability she's dead inside the house. They've wrecked the place, even eaten the window frames so that the panes dropped out. But we can't do anything here right now. First, we'd better go back to your place, and I'll notify my people and the other various authorities.’

Alan thought briefly about Pat Emmerton again. They would need to use her telephone.

Alan remained with Sheila and David whilst Roger Blade made his telephone calls from the Emmertons' house. After the initial horror of their discovery at the Hatherton farm his first reaction was one of immense relief. A tremendous responsibility had been removed from his shoulders. The authorities knew about the locusts. It was up to them now.

‘The Maxi is still parked up the road,’ Sheila said as she handed Alan a cup of tea. ‘Don't you think you ought to move it?’

‘I'll syphon a gallon of petrol out of the pickup.’ He watched her carefully as he spoke. ‘Then maybe tomorrow -’

‘Dad, we're not going to stay at Gran's,’ David blurted out. ‘At least, not for a while. Mum says so.’

Alan looked steadily at Sheila, searching for a reaction, a glimpse of his own marital future in her eyes.

‘Not at the moment, anyway,’ she said. ‘David and I have had a little talk. We don't quite know what our plans are for the present.’

‘I see,’ he said. But he didn't.

‘There's a funeral tomorrow,’ she went on. ‘Steve Emmerton's. In Clun at eleven-thirty. We can't both attend. Somebody has to look after David I thought maybe you would care to go.’

He nodded. It was best that way.

A few minutes later Roger Blade came back. There was a grim expression on his face as he joined them at the table.

‘My department is in a blue funk.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘So is the Ministry of Agriculture and just about every other department you care to mention. Since I left London this morning things have been happening. I spoke to my secretary. She couldn't fill me in on all the details. They can't keep pace, but basically there are locusts in about a dozen different regions of England! There was a message left in the office instructing me to stay here for the time being. I've given your friend's telephone number down the road. I'm sorry to hear about her husband, but judging from what I've heard there are quite a number of new widowers, widows, and, orphans after today's events! The police are going to Hatherton's farm to investigate. If they can't catch that bull they'll have to shoot it. Ministry of Agriculture officials are already down here looking into the latest outbreak, they tell me, but at the moment our own locust swarm have not been seen again. Don't worry. They will be!’

‘We can put you up in the spare bedroom,’ Alan told Blade, glancing at Sheila as he spoke. She nodded.

‘Thanks. I was rather hoping you'd say that. It may only be for a few days - hopefully. And if you could give me a hand during that time, Alan … I'll need somebody who knows the lie of the land.’

‘Sure.’ Alan had already decided to abandon everything except essential work on the smallholding. His number one priority, everybody's, was to fight the locusts. Until they were removed from the land nobody would be safe.

Elwyn Pugh had lived in Chapel Lawn all his life. He was a familiar figure about the village, less than five feet three inches in height, cap set squarely on his shock of grey hair, dark glasses hiding the dead eyes which stared sightlessly out of sunken sockets, his white stick tapping the pavement ahead of him as he walked.

For fifty of his seventy years in the village he had tuned virtually every piano throughout the area. Often he walked several miles to attend to the needs of his customers, declining offers of transport. His sight had been failing for several years but now it was gone altogether. He had no regrets. He recalled the village as it was in his youth. He had no wish to watch the changes, the relentless march of progress. Sometimes he was ridiculed by the schoolchildren. He heard them calling from the playground: ‘Here comes Blind Pugh.’ Others gave mock shrieks of terror. But Elwyn only smiled. He bore no malice; he had none in him.

The intense heat was troubling him. For once he found himself reluctant to undertake those long walks to time pianos, but nevertheless he determined to persevere. The four-and-a-half-mile trek to Clun was a formidable proposition, but he decided that it could well be much cooler up in the hills. Whenever possible he avoided main roads. Especially the Knighton to Clun road. There were no pavements and that meant walking on the rough grass verge, an uneven surface where there was the risk of falling headlong every few yards in spite of his probing stick.

It was shortly after ten o'clock in the morning when he left the small stone cottage where he lived in solitude. He did not have to be at his destination until two o'clock, and that gave him ample time, allowing for a short break in the shade somewhere en route to eat his sandwiches.

He took the climb up Hodre Bank very steadily, enjoying the tranquillity of the countryside around him. Bees hummed in their constant quest for pollen, grasshoppers creaked from the tall grass. In his mind he did not see the barren parched landscape, only lush greenery. The forest did not exist on Black Hill, only purple heather and an abundance of bilberries. For Blind Pugh nothing was going to change. He was adamant about that.

He smelled the smoke, a harsh aroma that stifled the sweeter ones, and remembered what someone had said about there being a fire on the hill. Still, he was only skirting the area, keeping to the lanes. His memory went back to 1940 and the Great Fire. He smiled. From what they said, the Black Hill had been changed to an artificially symmetrical landscape with row upon row of identical spruce and pine, so it might not be a bad thing. A year or two of ashes and then Nature would rise from the funeral pyre, just as she had before, the heather and gorse replacing the forestry. Not that he would be able to see it, but it was a nice thought just the same.

There were no flies to trouble him today. He supposed that the smell of burning had driven them away. As he ambled along he hummed some Mozart, and thought about the piano he was going to tune. A baby grand, one of the best he'd ever touched, and when he'd finished he would play it for a while, just to test it. That was one of the rewards of the job, the chance to use pianos which he could never afford to buy himself. So many of them were wasted. Just furniture, status symbols. Half the owners couldn't even play them. A slight twinge of bitterness on his part. Envy. He realized it and forcibly dispelled it. He had more to be grateful for than most. Blindness was a blessing. It enabled one to see life in its true perspective.

He paused, found his bearings, and began to tap along the hedgerow with his stick. There should be a gap not far away. Ah … He found it and went through, A disused barn, slowly rotting. The coolness was welcome. The smell of old timber - something few people noticed. He lowered himself on to the ground and leaned his back against a wooden support. The opportunity to rest was welcome. He unwrapped his sandwiches and began to munch steadily, not hungrily, eating out of habit because it was something he always did at this time of day.

He listened to the distant sounds; some he recognized instantly, others he had to interpret. A church bell solemnly tolling - a funeral. Elwyn wondered who it was who had died recently in Clun. He had not heard of any deaths, but there again, since he was unable to read the local papers, a lot of news escaped him.

The clear tones changed his mood to a sombre one. Death - it was more real lately than ever it had been in his life before. His time was short. He didn't mind. The only thing he feared was being taken into one of those homes, like old Jess Jenkins. A living mortuary. False kindness. They kept you alive long after you should be dead, contrary to every law of Nature. What was the point? Like being buried alive in a way. Blind Pugh didn't want to end up that way. He wanted to die in this kind of surroundings, in the environment he loved most.

What was that noise? A crunching sound, like a horse eating rolled oats, grinding its teeth, gnashing. A fine powdery substance showered down on him, some of it lodging in his moustache. Sawdust. He recognized the smell. It wasn't new wood. It came from the beams above him.

A sound outside like the wind getting up. It was impossible. He had learned to forecast the weather by the feel of the atmosphere. It was dry, not a trace of dampness in it. There was no wind to speak of. And yet …

Something was pattering on the outside of the old barn, like driving rain. The noise grew in volume, and the steady crunching all around him became louder and louder.

His curiosity turned to alarm. His blindness was not absolutely total. He could tell the difference between day and night even though he was not capable of discerning objects directly before his face. But suddenly day had become night, a claustrophobic blackness that clawed at him with tiny feet and fluttered around his head.

He lurched to his feet in fright. Was this some ghastly nightmare? Had he fallen asleep in the heat of the day and dreamed that …? No, these things were real, and deadly. He didn't know what they were - certainly nothing native to this part of the country. They dashed themselves against him with terrifying clicking noises, clung to his clothing, began to devour it.

He stumbled out into the open. His stick dropped from his hand. It didn't matter. There was no time to use it. Direction was immaterial. Just get away. Flee.

The shambling run of an old man, breath wheezing through cracked lips, beating the air madly with his arms. Across the hard surface of the lane, down an incline. Easier going, stumbling, falling once. The insects were all over him, every one of them settled, grating furiously as they devoured his clothing.

A small swarm. Perhaps half a million, split up from the myriads. Hungry. Some died even as they ate, having reached their allotted span.

Then, in one sudden movement, they took wing again. Elwyn Pugh halted, amazed. Daylight again. The rush of tiny wings receding.

Almost immediately he was aware of another sensation, an acrid stifling, smoke billowing against him, choking him. From all sides. He turned away and felt the heat of the flames. He retreated in the other direction, but was forced back again. All around searing heat, closing in on him.

He stood still. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. The locusts had brought him here, driven him into the heart of the fire that had spread out on to the scrubland from the forestry. They had led him in by the one safe path. Now that was closed. A circle of flames crackled, advancing, bearing down on one helpless blind man.

He sank to his knees, gasping. And he prayed. Not that he might be delivered, but that mankind might be spared the curse of the swarm of winged death.

Chapter 11

‘And here are the main points of the news again.’ The grey-haired newscaster glanced down at a sheaf of papers in front of him as though he preferred not to meet the gaze of the nation, sensing the fear that he was transmitting by reading those few typewritten words.

‘Throughout Britain swarms of locusts have been ravaging both rural and suburban areas. These first appeared less than a week ago, in small numbers, and have now been sighted in Shropshire, the West Midlands, the Home Counties, Lincolnshire, and in the West Country. In some areas traffic on major roads has been brought to a standstill. Many people have remained indoors. A spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture states that this freak outbreak is due to extreme climatic conditions, although it is not yet certain how the insects arrived in Britain. The government are confident that the pests will be dealt with in a matter of days, and the public are urged not to panic …’

Alan Alton leaned forward and switched off the television set. Neither he nor Roger Blade were interested in the remaining news items. Just locusts. Sheila had retired early to bed as she preferred not to leave David on his own once darkness had fallen.

‘D'you think the authorities can handle the problem as easily as they are trying to make out?’ Alan asked.

‘Certainly not easily.’ Roger Blade shook his head. ‘It's grown too big, caught them unawares. The question is whether they can cope at all. It depends on how long it goes on for. Two major factors control that. First, vegetation. They will stay in any one area as long as there is plenty of food. When that's gone, they move on. Secondly, the climate. A change in the weather, just a drop of ten or fifteen degrees, or a few heavy thunderstorms, and that would be the end of them tomorrow. The main problem is how to deal with it without the means being detrimental to the environment. I've advised that Fenitrothion is sprayed on the swarms from the air. That's the spray most widely used abroad. We can't use anything containing DDT although that would probably be the most effective. Anyway, first thing they'll do is to make an environmental survey to see what can be used. That takes time. I know it's frustrating, the locusts breeding in their millions all the time, but it has to be done. Therefore, we can say that the enemy have a few days' grace - unhampered ravaging. Then the boys will move in. They'll use planes, helicopters in some areas. If everything went according to plan, the hordes could be wiped out in a couple of days. What we want is for them to join together into big swarms instead of remaining split up. Like the big one here that hit the Hathertons' farm. If that one would stick together it'd make it so much easier for us. The remaining small swarms will join it. But if it gets broken up, we're in dead trouble.’

‘What about the suburban swarms? You can't go spraying housing estates and towns and cities.’

‘No,’ - Blade rubbed his chin thoughtfully – ‘we can't. In fact, there's not much we can do there except hope that they'll head for the country to join up with the others.’ Blade stood up. ‘I think I'd better be turning in. Tomorrow's going to be a long hot tiring day. I've got a meeting with the Forestry Commission first thing in the morning. We want to try and establish how many of the pine forests are being used as sanctuaries by the locusts. They say it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. At least all these forest fires will help to keep the damned things out in the open where we might just stand a chance of clobbering them.’

Joe Billings had just one hobby in life, an obsession that kept him busier than he had been in the days when he worked in the police force. His long walled garden stretched for seventy yards, right from the rear of his town house in Lichfield to the edge of the large open reservoir. Every square inch was cultivated to perfection, and yet his hobby was not gardening itself. He went further than that. Over the years he had grown his own tobacco, large Brazilian variety plants that reached a height of four or five feet, the leaves long and broad. This in itself would not have been sufficient had he not perfected the curing and processing, a messy, smelly operation during which he boiled the tobacco in a large saucepan on the stove in the kitchen. His small frail wife had long ago resigned herself to the pungent aroma of ‘the boilings’ and had now become so used to the odours that she would quite happily prepare the dinner in close proximity to the nicotine stew.

Joe, grossly overweight, his complexion an unhealthy reddish hue, welcomed the drought with an enthusiasm which baffled his neighbours. His tobacco plants, once established, at a time when there was still moisture in the soil, grew with all the grandeur of a Virginian plantation. By the second week in July the leaves, now slightly mottled, were ready for harvesting, three weeks earlier than the ex-policeman had ever known before. Even in 1976 he had not harvested until the first week in August.

He was up early that morning. The sun was shining fiercely as he drank his first cup of tea of the day, and then he went out into the garden. His feet kicked up the dust as he walked down the long path, savouring the prospect of a day of great satisfaction, the outcome of which would be lines of fine leaf strung up in the garage and shed, where they would remain until October … no, earlier this year … when they would be taken down, then a light golden brown colour, ready for curing. It -

He pulled up abruptly, his heavy-rimmed spectacles falling forward on his nose. He adjusted them and peered, disbelief registering on his face.

‘What the devil!’ His tongue eased its way around his lips, a mannerism he had developed during thirty years in the force, betraying the trait of nervousness and indecision which had blunted his promotion hopes.

Last night the leaf had hung from his plants in abundance. He had walked down the garden after eleven o'clock, gloating over them by the light of the street lamp that jutted above his boundary wall. Now only the stalks stuck up starkly. Not a leaf or flower was to be seen. And yet … the trunks of the plants were thicker. And darker. And they appeared to be moving.

Joe advanced another step, bending forward, peering through the thick lenses. Those stalks were moving. They were alive. A darker shade of colour.

‘Caterpillars!’ he grunted in dismay and disgust. ‘The little buggers have cleared the lot!’

He could hear the remains of his plants being devoured, a crisp crackling noise like a goat chewing on a cabbage stalk. He advanced still further, and then he gasped in alarm. These were no ordinary garden pests. They were creatures at least three inches in length, giant grasshoppers with striped wings, standing two and three deep on the remnants of the stems. The insects were covering the ground, too. The one nearest to him was crunching on one of its own kind, a cannibal that watched him with glittering tiny red eyes whilst it ate.

Joe Billings's first reaction was one of anger. Blinded to everything else he looked around him, picked up a nearby rake, and swung it above his head. It came down with all the force of his sixteen stone behind it, the line of steel prongs cutting deep into the nearest section of the crawling green mass.

‘You bastards!’ he yelled. ‘You -’

Suddenly the air was filled with thousands of the raiders as they spiralled upwards, like angry hornets disturbed from their nest. They made a noise like rushing water down a pebbled course. It seemed that every single one was airborne, bunching together, in a weird formation, each one knowing its position and taking it up. But there was no hint of fear at the appearance of man. Nor were they going to be frightened off from the remnants of their feast.

Joe staggered back under the impact of the striking swarm. They funnelled down out of the sky, diving on to their human target, the hook-like claws of the first battalion securing a hold on his striped shirt and soiled grey flannel trousers. They landed on his wide-brimmed Panama hat, perching on the rim and on the crown, beginning the next course of the banquet before those following on piled on top of them.

His glasses were knocked from his face and crushed beneath him as he fell. He began to shout, his powerful voice loaded with terror echoing along the rows of adjoining houses. Even at the height of his fear he recalled the previous night's television news, the grim stories and dire warnings. It was impossible. They would not infiltrate the towns.

But they had. The locusts were here, the scourge of tropical climates, a species older than Moses himself.

Windows were opened all along the street. Heads looked out in bewilderment, some with angry expressions at being roused at this hour of the morning. Annoyance turned to horror as a dozen or more residents witnessed the macabre scene; old Joe Billings (it had to be him, it was his garden) a writhing featureless shape, screaming for help beneath a heap of …

‘It's the locusts!’ somebody shouted. ‘The locusts are here!’

Mass hysteria. Shouts and screams, people spilling out into the street. Others were closing and barring their doors and windows.

Ethel Billings sat up in bed, aroused by the commotion. What was going on? Joe had got up early to harvest his tobacco. She recognized his voice, or rather thought she did. Sort of muffled. Someone was pounding on the front door.

Trembling, bewildered, she went downstairs. Fists were thudding frantically on the door, so she turned the key and recoiled as three men pushed their way in, wielding yard brooms in a menacing manner.

‘It's Joe,’ one gulped. ‘Out the back. The locusts have got him.’

She was pushed to one side, frightened, not understanding. Except … locusts. The television man said that … Oh, my God! Joe!

Ethel rushed through the kitchen, out to the back yard, and then almost fainted. Her husband lay there, deathly still on the narrow path. The three men were striking fiercely with their brooms, flailing the air. And streaming away like a vanishing wisp of smoke was a host of huge flying insects, diving, jinking, faster than snipe flushed from a bog.

The men turned. One of them dropped on to his knees beside Joe Billings, bent his head, listening.

‘What is it, Bill?' one of the others said, his voice a hushed whisper, the colour draining from his face.

‘I think he's …’

‘But them things don't 'urt people. They said on the box that they only eat greenstuff.’

‘That's right.’ The kneeling man straightened up. ‘They don't actually kill yer, but I think the old chap's had a heart attack!’

Ethel Billings felt her senses reeling and then she collapsed in a faint.

Janet Thurston was full of admiration for the fertility clinic. At thirty-eight she had virtually abandoned the idea of having a baby. After seventeen years of marriage and countless consultations with a variety of doctors, she had at last been granted her wish. Blocked tubes had been the cause. One of the Birmingham clinics had located the source of the trouble within a year of her moving into the area. Up north they had blamed the failure on her husband. But it didn't matter. Not now. Not when she had a beautiful three-week-old son. Doug, they had called him. After her husband. A tribute to Doug senior, the proudest father in the city.

Janet considered that she was fortunate to give birth at such a wonderful time of the year. Such gorgeous weather. And their tiny garden was ideally situated, shaded by the massive factory which stood less than fifty yards away, and this meant that she could put little Doug outside in his pram at almost any time of day. It was so much healthier for him. Had they lived in the country it would probably have been so hot that he would have had to remain indoors all day and become a pallid baby, not fresh and rosy-cheeked as he was.

He was out there now as she began washing another batch of nappies in the old twin-tub. She couldn't quite see him from the kitchen window, but she could see the hood of the pram. He was safe enough.

Radio One blared out from the transistor on the window sill. The ‘Golden Hour’ today was 1961. The records were familiar, bringing back happy memories even if they did serve to remind her of her age. She wondered if it was possible for her to have another baby. It was a lovely thought. A little brother or sister for Dougie. She might just manage it before she was forty now that they had found out how to unblock those tubes. She'd ask about it on her next visit to the postnatal clinic. They would advise her.

Another record. The words came flooding back to her and she joined in at the top of her voice.

Suddenly she stopped in mid verse as a movement through the open window caught her eye - the pram. It was rocking to and fro, so vigorously that she knew that baby Doug did not have the strength to shake it like that. Even as she ran outside she heard his cries, muffled screechings which the radio in the kitchen had drowned. Something was wrong.

She reached the pram, and for one moment she was rendered motionless with shock and terror. The interior was alive, seething with huge long-legged insects that crawled and buried her son; hundreds of them! She could barely distinguish him beneath them.

A cloud of locusts flew up at her from the pram, viciously, she felt sharp stinging pains on her face and bare arms. Yet her maternal instinct was uppermost, her own safety disregarded as she rushed forward, plunging her hands into the seething mass. The shawls and pram sheets were in shreds, the baby was virtually naked. She grabbed him by his waist, clutching him to her, locusts as well. With frantic fingers she attempted to pluck them from him, tearing at them in handfuls, squashing them into a sticky mess that made her efforts more difficult.

She was screaming, running in the direction of the house, but the attackers were relentless, determined. Her sight was obscured, her foot caught against something. She was falling. Instinctively she twisted round so that the baby was uppermost, her own body taking the force of the fall, jarring the breath from her body. Suffocated, fighting a losing battle. They were everywhere, countless hordes, scratching and biting at the human pincushions which lay beneath them.

Blood! She felt its sticky warmth on her face. Doug's body was clutched against her, but she couldn't keep them off him. His cries had died away to a low gurgling. Panic-stricken she tried to regain her feet. They were unable to support her, slipping, throwing her down again. The locusts covered her entire body now, clawing their way up her legs, beneath her skirt and blouse, eating the material, gouging into her soft flesh. Even her tightly pressed thighs could not keep them out. She writhed as though in orgasm and the baby slipped from her arms.

Frantically she tried to get to him, throwing herself sideways, heedless of her own agony. Her fingers groped, ignoring the heap of tiny bodies, delving down until she felt the tender infantile skin. It was warm and sticky, blood flowing freely from a multitude of tiny pinprick wounds.

Somewhere beyond the clicking and crunching she heard human voices, shouts of alarm, screams.

‘It's those locusts!’

‘They're attacking Mrs Thurston and her baby. Eating them!’

A terrible battle ensued - a group of neighbours, mostly young housewives, hitting out with rolled newspapers and brooms, others attempting to drag Janet and Doug back indoors. Everywhere doors and windows were being slammed.

Janet felt herself being dragged along bodily, locusts being crushed to death on her all the time.

‘My baby,’ she groaned, ‘Oh, God, save my baby!’

Briefly she lost consciousness. The horror, the physical pain slipped into oblivion for a few seconds, and then surged slowly back into awful reality. She was lying on the kitchen floor, her clothes in tatters, women bending over her. She smelled the blood, tasted it in her mouth. Vile!

She began to struggle up into a sitting position, pushing off the hands which tried to restrain her, forcing her head round, searching desperately.

‘My baby ..’ she croaked.

‘Don't - don't look, love,’ one of the others whispered.

But she did. She stared, the scream already starting in her throat. Little Doug lay there, a few feet from her, the remnants of a blood-soaked cot sheet failing to cover his emaciated body. Her first thought was that it could not be her child that lay there. The bloated, bloody features bore no resemblance - the swollen tongue protruding from the gaping mouth, nostrils eaten into a single hole, eyes lidless. A million pinpricks from head to feet, each puncture oozing blood which seeped out like mountain streams converging on the major river, scarlet trickles all playing their part to form a deep crimson torrent. Arms and legs spreadeagled, the overall picture so horrible that her mind instantly rejected it, refusing to accept that it was possible. She gave a long scream that turned to insane laughter, head back, exposing the wounds on her throat, the remains of her blouse slipping from her shoulders, breasts swinging from side to side, nipples torn to shreds where the locusts had gorged themselves on human milk.

It took three of them to hold her down until the ambulance arrived.

Lincolnshire, a flat expanse of farmland and market gardens, boundaries marked by deep dykes, a few small woodlands here and there to break up the overall uniformity. Intensive agriculture, every acre utilized to the extent of its capacity, yielding a maximum crop year after year. Even in the long drought the landscape gave an impression of lushness, deep green fields that were irrigated by the water from the maze of ditches, the loamy soil retaining its moisture for longer than in other parts of the country.

Ted Satterthwaite was not impatient to see the rains come. He could hold out for a long time yet, and all the time the price of fresh vegetables was escalating in the shops. It was a seller's market. His two hundred acres of King Edwards were probably the best in Britain, and twenty acres of onions that had not a trace of fly on them. Carrots, beetroot, lettuce, parsnips, peas, beans, everything the housewife wanted. But Ted was in no hurry to sell. He could have sent ten tons of produce a day to Birmingham's Smithfield market. Instead he sent five. Just enough to keep his regular market customers interested. And when things got really tight - about the end of August if this weather held - then his full complement of lorries would be loaded up. That was good business. His accountant endorsed his judgement, not that that mattered. A crazy year. Many farmers would go to the wall, a few would make their fortunes. Ted Satterthwaite intended to be amongst the latter.

He had cut down on hiring casual labour at present. Just enough to cope with the final harvesting of the early potato crop. Spin it out as long as possible.

He stood on the edge of the long seventeen-acre field and watched his potato pickers labouring in the blistering sunshine. Twelve women, a few kids helping them. They weren't hurrying, some of them standing about gossiping. For once he didn't mind. Their laziness was putting cash in his pocket. By the end of the week there would be another 10p a pound on spuds. He chuckled aloud at the thought.

Short and stocky, Ted Satterthwaite was a hard worker when the occasion demanded. In the depths of winter he would quite happily join his workforce in the unpleasant task of cutting frozen sprouts and cabbages. If the market demanded surplus greenstuff. If it didn't, then he would leave it to his staff to harvest the daily minimum quantity. That was what farming was all about. You never worked for nothing.

He pulled a grubby handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers and mopped his brow. It was too damned hot to be standing about out here. In normal summers one would have expected a thunderstorm within a few hours in this kind of temperature. But it wasn't humid. Just dry and hot.

A distant rumbling. Miles away. Somewhere the other side of Spalding. He listened. Definitely thunder, but coming closer by the second. Hell, that was strange. There was no wind to speed the storm, and it wasn't thundery weather, anyway. Maybe it was aircraft on their way to carry out some test flights over the Wash. The RAF had so many new types of planes these days that it was no longer possible to identify them by their engine sounds. A good many of them flew faster than sound, anyway. You could hear them breaking the barrier out over the mudflats.

Yes, it had to be aircraft. Having reached this decision and thinking that it was time to head back to the farm for a long cool lager, Ted glanced up and saw a huge cloud coming from the west. He stared, his wide mouth falling open in surprise. It hadn't been there a few seconds ago. The sky had been empty. It wasn't aircraft but it was travelling almost as fast, speeding through a windless sky, heading this way.

He watched its approach in astonishment, the noise becoming louder and louder, a swishing, rumbling sound, interspersed with clickings like a host of unmusical castanets. The angry roaring of a tearing gale.

They were immediately overhead, millions of large flying insects, losing height, dipping, nosediving on to the Satterthwaite expanse of lush vegetation, determined, vicious, alighting so perfectly, delicately, beginning to feed immediately. The crops were invisible, hidden beneath a cloak of dark green, the sound of their arrival changing to one of loud crunching.

The potato pickers were retreating frantically, grabbing their children, pulling them along.

Ted stood watching, unable to move, the horror of it all numbing his brain. A living tide seethed and swirled on three sides of him, undulating waves of locusts decimating his crops at the rate of several tons a minute, crisp currency being pulped into a valueless nothingness.

The women passed him, ignoring him, urging each other to flee. He saw them, forgot them, remained where he was.

Three hours later he was still there, squatting on his haunches. He saw the potato tops devoured and the tubers pulled up from the ground. Twenty acres of onions suffered the same fate, the sharp rank stench almost overpowering. Nothing was overlooked. A swarm of locusts flew up and settled on a dead elm tree, a victim of the Dutch elm disease three years ago. The tone of the crunching changed, a sound akin to the cracking of nuts. The column of insects became lower and lower as the rotting tree trunk was diminished.

The sun sank in the western sky. Satterthwaite saw the locusts start to leave, wisping upwards, a long snake-like shape twisting and jerking high into the air, growing thicker by the second, circling round as though trying to get a sense of direction. Circling. For one awful moment he thought that they were coming back again, not that it would have mattered because the devastation was complete.

Then they were gone, the thunder-like grumblings receding with them, heading eastwards.

It was dark before Ted Satterthwaite made a move. Slowly, dragging his feet, he retraced his steps of several hours ago, until finally he arrived at the unlit farmhouse. He went inside, not bothering to switch on the light.

The cupboard beneath the stairs was a jumble of household cleaning equipment. Brushes and mops clattered on the floor as he groped amongst them. Mrs Thorpe, his housekeeper, was an untidy woman in places where it didn't matter. But nothing mattered any more.

His fingers touched cold hard steel, and closed over the twin barrels of the shotgun which had lain there gathering dust for months. He dragged it out, leaned it up against the door, and foraged in the cupboard again. This time it took him longer to find what he was after, a small cardboard box which rattled as he picked it up.

He tore open the flap and extracted a plastic-cased cylinder with a metal head. One cartridge would be enough for his purpose.

He went back outside into the yard. The night was sultry once again, his shirt clinging damply to his body. He sweated profusely, and for one second almost abandoned the idea. But there was no other way out. Not now that the locusts had been. He was glad that he wasn't married. Or was he sorry? It might have made a difference.

He opened the breech of the gun, pushed the cartridge into the right-hand barrel, and closed it with a soft metallic click. A deep breath. He pushed the safety-catch forward and reversed the weapon so that the cold steel of the barrels touched his forehead.

It wasn't easy, certainly not for a short man. One almost needed to be a contortionist. He could just reach the triggers with the tip of his forefinger, taking the first pressure. Again he almost chickened out. Then, in a moment of anger at his own cowardice, he pushed forward.

A blinding explosion. The gun bucked and spun from his grasp, clattering across the stone-flagged patio. His body jerked upright, the upper portion of the skull disintegrated by the deadly charge of lead shot, the pellets spattering on the stone wall beyond, spraying a fountain of scarlet blood and slimy grey substance. Splinters of bone were thrown in all directions, and the dead body keeled slowly backwards.

The locust plague had claimed another victim. The death toll was mounting. Fast.

Roger Blade returned to ‘The Granary’ shortly after noon, having been away at the stables making a few telephone calls. He had a worried expression on his face as he came in through the open door.

‘I'll have to be leaving you for a day or two,’ he told Sheila and Alan. ‘The big swarm, the one that's ravaged its way through East Anglia, is out on the salt marshes of the Wash, devouring acres of zos and spartina grass by the hour. The boys are ready to go into action. I think we can clobber this lot without too much trouble. I'll try and make it back here by Friday, but if there are any problems phone the London office. They'll get a message to me.’

‘Tell me.’ Alan looked thoughtful. ‘I always thought that locusts only ate vegetation. Maybe an odd dead sheep they came across in the course of feeding, but there have been reports on the eleven o'clock news about people being bitten. A baby was killed in Birmingham.’

‘Remember the ladybirds of 1976?’ Blade looked grim. ‘They took to biting people. It usually happened in areas where they had made a complete clean-up of the blackfly and greenfly. They were starving. The attacks on humans reported so far have all been inside suburban areas. The swarms have devastated all the available gardens and allotments so they've turned to woodwork, other material, and then humans when food was running out.’

‘Do you think that …’ Alan chose his words carefully, lowering his voice so that it would not reach David upstairs in his room, ‘that if they got out of hand, cleaned up whole counties, then the people would be in danger?’

‘Let's hope we put paid to the blighters before then,’ Blade said. ‘By the way, a message from Mrs Emmerton. She said that you promised to have a look at one of her horses that has gone lame.’

‘Damn, it slipped my mind completely. I'll take a walk up there after lunch. Are you going to have a bite to eat before you go?’

‘I'd better get moving right away, thanks all the same.’ Blade smiled at Sheila. ‘And don't get worrying about these locusts. Within a fortnight everybody will have forgotten all about them, and we'll be back to the usual news headlines of wildcat strikes and secondary picketing.’

But his tone lacked conviction, Roger Blade was a very worried man.

Chapter 12

‘That should be fine.’ Alan Alton finished bandaging the horse's fetlock and straightened up. ‘A few days and he'll be back to normal.’

‘Thanks.’ Pat Emmerton smiled, and then her eyes narrowed. ‘By the way, I thought you said at the weekend your wife was leaving you?’

‘She was.’ Alan swallowed, suddenly feeling the guilt of a liar. ‘In fact, we were on our way down to Clun, when she was going to hitch-hike back to the Midlands, when the car ran out of petrol. Then the Black Hill burst into flames. I had to go and help with the firefighting, and when it got round to evening the locusts started.’ It sounded like a string of hastily fabricated excuses.

‘I see,’ Pat's tone was one of obvious disbelief. ‘Hey, there's a car coming. Turning in here by the sound of it.’

They watched as a blue Datsun pulled into the yard, a balding red-faced man behind the wheel.

‘Oh, hell!’ She swore softly, and lowered her voice. ‘It's Mr Matthews, the vet. I completely forgot to give him a ring and cancel the call. He couldn't have come at a worse moment.’

Ed Matthews dragged his bulky form out of the car and, ignoring Pat, glowered at Alan.

‘You're Alton, aren't you?’ he snapped. ‘The guy who had a practice in the Midlands?’

‘That's me.’ Alan felt an instant dislike for the other, the abrupt manner, the way he pointed a stubby forefinger. ‘Why? Any complaints?’

‘You've no business practising in this area.’ The vet's pointing finger moved on and lined up on the bandaged fetlock. ‘I'm damned well going to report you!’

‘Please yourself,’ Alan snapped, ‘but I can do what I like providing I don't charge a fee. And this job is as free as the smoky Black Hill air.’

Matthews glowered. He looked at Pat. ‘There will be a call-out charge,’ he snapped, and turned back to his car.

‘Send the bill.’ Her answer was like the crack of a whiplash, her eyes blazing. ‘You'll get a cheque by return. As always.’

They watched him drive away, hurtling the car out into the lane in his anger. Pat Emmerton let out a deep sigh as though deliberately getting her anger out of her system.

‘Thanks, Alan.’ She relaxed and smiled. ‘I guess my relationship with Edward Matthews and Son is over.’

‘I can probably deal with most of your problems.’ He glanced sideways at her, his eyes running over her small slim body, remembering. ‘Just give me a shout if anything crops up.’

‘By the way’ - it was the first time that he had ever noted a trace of nervousness about her, her fingers twisting together, her eyes fixed on the ground – ‘I … I owe you an apology.’

‘If you do, then I'm not aware of it.’

‘About the other day. When I called you upstairs. I'm sorry. I make no excuses. It was deliberate. I wanted you to … to make love to me. I guess I was desperate. Sex is a kind of outlet for me. When anything builds up inside me that's the only way I can get it out. I'm sorry.’

‘I'm not.’ He licked his dry lips, suddenly feeling that for once he had her at a disadvantage. ‘I wanted it, too. It was just that the timing was wrong. The fire. Sheila leaving, waiting for me to take here down to Clun in the car. Any other time …’

‘No hard feelings then?’ - Sheer relief in her voice, her confidence surging back.

‘None at all. I promise.’

‘I'm glad.’ She turned and closed the stable door, pushing the bolt home, fondling the horse which leaned over, nuzzling her. ‘I've just made a pot of tea.’

‘There's nothing I'd like better.’

He followed her inside, watching the way she walked, her figure more pronounced in blouse and jeans than in the more conventional riding gear. His feelings were mixed. Sympathy. She didn't appear to need it. There was not a trace of grief evident. Sexual arousement. That went without saying. He only had to look at her for a couple of minutes. Not even that. Thinking about her was sufficient. She bred fantasies faster than the locusts multiplied.

His eye fell on the telephone - ominous, squatting on the small coffee table. He half expected it to start ringing, jangling harshly, eager to announce some fresh disaster. It didn't. It let him pass and go through into the sitting room.

‘You think I'm callous, don't you?’ She handed him a cup of tea. 'About Steve, I mean.’

‘No, I -’

‘Yes, you do. Everybody does. I'm not really. I just don't show it in the way most women would. Oh, I cried, all right. Make no mistake about that. The night after he died. And after the funeral. I sobbed for hours, but I got it all out of my system. Maybe it would have been a lot harder if things had still been the same between us as they once were. But I don't believe in prolonging grief. You can't alter what's happened. What's done is done, and that's that. Life has to go on. Sounds corny, doesn't it? But it's true. I'm stopping on here. Horses are everything to me. I guess marriage was an experience that I needed early in life. The initial romance wears off, and you have to live with each other, finding out things that you never dreamed existed, small faults that are magnified over the years. You get on each other's nerves. Some couples split up, but it doesn't solve anything for them. They forget what it's like, and get married again. A kind of replay, the first tie forgotten. Not me. I'd never marry again. But there are times when I need a man desperately. Like the other day. Oh, Jesus, I needed it then to get everything out of me. I'd built everything up to a peak. And do you know what I did after you'd gone?’

Alan hazarded a guess, but he said, ‘I've no idea.’

‘Well, I'll tell you.’ She moved closer to him on the settee, her wide eyes meeting his, and he knew that every word she spoke was the truth. ‘I masturbated for about an hour. Women generally don't admit to doing those kind of things. But why pretend you don't? God, I went through a host of fantasies, all of them about what might have happened if you hadn't gone. But it didn't do any good. After it was all over, the depressions closed in on me, a thousand times worse than before. And the shame. In your eyes I was a common hussy, offering my body when my husband was not yet in his grave. I don't blame you for thinking what you did. It was despicable. But I'd do exactly the same again. I couldn't help it.’

For some time they sat in silence, both staring down at the frayed carpet. Alan still believed her.

‘What I told you was the truth also,’ he said. ‘About Sheila. Only the boy has been keeping us together up until now. Suddenly it was all over. Just for a few hours. She was really going. Then a number of things happened and kept us together. I don't think she'll go now, whatever happens. We reached the brink and turned back. I guess it's right what you say about marriage, though.’

Again they lapsed into silence. They had both got a lot off their minds in a short time. Their mutual frankness seemed to draw them closer together. Neither made the first move. It was mutual. Her head rested against his shoulder, her face upturned to his, lips poised, on a direct course that met halfway in a first tentative kiss. Mouths brushed lightly at first, reluctant to break contact, then pressed harder. Tongues probed, met, entwined.

Alan sensed the sharpness of her erect nipples scraping his chest through his T-shirt. He thought she wasn't wearing a bra. His finger undid a couple of buttons on her blouse and proved it. She tensed, responded, her tiny hands smoothing over his own body, going lower and lower. And lower. There was no way back.

Everything was so natural, flowing movements that did not break the continuity, the removal of garments all part of the process of making love. His memory reminded him of another such time, the smell of pines, Sheila … so long ago.

They were naked on the old couch, Pat more lovely, more desirable than even she had been the last time he had viewed her nudity. This was not premeditated. It was spontaneous, on both parts. There was no definite leading role. They shared it.

Her body trembled with emotion as he penetrated her, clutching at him, her fingernails raking his chest and back. Her first orgasm came quickly. She writhed and convulsed beneath him, head back, eyes closed, pushing her firm nipples up at him, mutely demanding to have them kissed.

He had half-expected her emotions to subside with the climax, but it seemed to serve as a springboard, launching her into a frenzy of love, enabling her to do a host of things she wanted to, destroying the last vestiges of inhibition. Everything was so perfect that it might have been rehearsed, the way she came from beneath him and went on top, her soft lips closing over his, her head bent forward so that her long blonde hair fell forward and hid her expression from him.

She sat astride him, displaying the full talents of her horsemanship, able to stay on a mount that bucked high and threatened to throw her off, riding her animal to a standstill, both of them exhausted, flecked with sweat.

They lay there for a long time afterwards, still coupled, savouring all that had gone before, unwilling to end it all. Neither of them knew whether it would happen again, or if it did, whether it would be so beautifully satisfying during that time when two people merged into one.

Alan did not assist her to dress. It would have spoiled it.

David fetched his stick insects down from the granary. Four of them. He had tipped them from their glass containers into a cardboard box, and his small hands held the lid down tightly. He heard them moving about, bewildered at the sudden darkness, sensing that something was going to happen to them.

He had determined to get rid of his pets. No longer did their presence interest him. Worse than that, they gave him a feeling of uneasiness. The dream. They were like the locusts, watching his every move as though waiting their chance to fly at him, settle on him, attack, bite.

Run … run … run …

He paused at the foot of the flight of stone steps. Last night he had dreamed about the locusts again. Not about the dead tramp, thankfully. Just locusts. They had come in their millions, covering the land, and the house, battering their tiny bodies against the windows. Screeching. Demanding that he freed his stick insects. The same species. Well, almost. The locusts knew about them, that he'd got them in glass prisons in the granary. Set them free!

He decided that he would set them loose in the field beyond the house. There was still some vegetation left. They would survive. And, after all, it was much kinder than keeping them cooped up.

The air still had a smoky flavour to it, but the long columns of smoke no longer rose into the sky over Black Hill. The fire was as good as out - just a couple of acres on the fringe where it burned underground and the firemen were having to keep it damped down. But the stench still lingered.

He paused and glanced in the direction of the stables. His father was somewhere down there, seeing to one of the horses. Mummy hadn't seemed to like the idea, but the boy could not understand why. After all, being kind to animals, helping them to get better, was a good thing. Mummy was funny about a lot of things lately, couldn't seem to make up her mind about anything, even going to stay at Gran's. She hadn't even expressed jubilation at the freeing of the stick insects. Don't go too far and don't be away too long. Women were strange, he decided.

He climbed over the fence and into the field. The grass beneath his feet was hard, brittle, stems snapping off like twigs. Hardly any greenery except the tall thistles and the hedgerows. He walked on. Perhaps the hedges were the best place to let his insects go. There was shade there, and some leaves. And they liked sticks.

He set the box down on the ground and undid the lid, peeped inside. He could not repress a shudder. The creatures were there, clustered on a privet twig which he had dropped in yesterday. The leaves were all gone. They regarded him steadily. Hungrily.

He was sweating and it had nothing to do with the heat. That dream. It had been so real. He tipped the carton on to its side, making sure that the flaps could not swing shut. The occupants would find their own way out in their own time. It was kinder, he tried to console himself, letting them go like this. They would be all right.

He straightened up. The hawthorn hedge was barely five yards from where he stood. Seconds ago he had been in its shadow. Now the sunlight hit him full in the face, momentarily blinding him. He turned his head away, waited a few seconds, looked back again. There was a massive indentation in the hedge, a gap that was widening even as he watched, foliage vanishing before his gaze.

He stood rooted to the spot, not understanding. The branches were alive, moving, disappearing. A gnashing and crunching noise.

The nightmare which had never really left him, waking or sleeping, hit him with the full force of a hammer blow. At first he thought that the creatures loaded on top of one another on the hedgerow were stick insects. They couldn't be. His pets had not yet emerged from the box. Grasshoppers? Yes, but so much bigger, and different. Locusts!

He started to back away, looking to the right and left. They were everywhere, mostly on the hawthorn, but a few had dropped off and were beginning to feed on the straw-like grass. A tall thistle was felled, toppling over like an axed beech tree, being seized and devoured.

He sensed tiny feet on his legs and looked down in horror. Three or four crawled on him. Frantically, he struck at them, squashing them into a greenish-yellow slime on his skin.

A swishing noise. More had alighted in the field. The orchestra was tuning up; the concert of death and destruction was only just beginning. More and more were arriving. They were everywhere, blotting out the sun as they twittered in.

David broke into a run. Run … run … run.

A zigzag course. One second the ground in front of him was clear, the next it was swarming with the hordes. This way. That way. Checking. Backtracking.

He was halfway back to the house before he started to scream. That was when they landed on his head, entwining their claws in his hair. Sharp pinpricks. They were biting!

Sheila heard him and appeared in the doorway, shielding her eyes. Then she spotted him and clutched at the doorpost for support. Oh, God, it couldn't be happening! It was impossible. She was in bed, tossing restlessly, the figments of her imagination returning to torment her. The same dream, a re-run, shown again for the sole purpose of instilling terror into her. A repeat performance, running breathlessly, heedless of her own safety, one thought uppermost in her mind - get David! Get him back into the house.

She knew that it was real enough before she reached the field. Locusts perched and hung on the fence posts, staring at her, making malevolent sounds, the chorus being taken up all around.

‘David!’ She cut him off, grabbed him by the arm. ‘Keep close to me. And run!’

Run … run … run.

Running a gauntlet, cutting a path through the feeding myriads, in places forced to tread on them, sending them spraying up into the air so that they flew angrily at the fugitives. No time to dislodge those on her body. Get back indoors, put the barricades up. Oh, why hadn't she insisted on taking David to safety when she'd had the chance? She'd weakened, chosen the easy way out, and now they were all going to pay for it.

The garden. The locusts had already arrived, but they had not gone beyond the vegetable patch. The rows of peas and swedes which had survived the drought so far had stopped them. Inches deep, the creatures fed, noisily, greedily, oblivious to mankind.

‘Sheila!’

She paused in her flight. Alan was coming in through the gateway, running towards them. ‘Get back inside!’

What the hell d'you think I'm trying to do? Words would not come. Three people, huddled, stumbling over the uneven ground in the last lap of their dash to safety. Safety? Nowhere was safe.

The door was slammed.

‘Kill those on you.’ Alan left them, dashing from window to window, slamming them shut with a force that rattled the panes. Crumpling newspapers, dragging the coal and log buckets through into the lounge. Every second counted.

He wondered what the world record for laying and lighting a fire was. There surely had to be one. There were records for everything. Maybe he had broken it. A match flared, the paper caught. Wood crackled. Smoke began trickling up the chimney.

‘We made it,’ he breathed. ‘I think. I hope. They won't face the chimney now. We might just keep 'em out.’

Sheila killed the last of the locusts which clung to David's body. They both looked as though they had slipped into some stagnant woodland pool and emerged covered in slime.

‘We're going to have a bath.’ She somehow fought off the sickness. Perhaps she had already vomited out there. She couldn't remember. She didn't want to go back over the details. David was clinging to her, whimpering.

‘We don't have enough water for bathing,’ Alan said.

‘Then we'll use what there is.’ She whirled on him angrily. ‘Oh, God, I wish we'd gone on down to Clun the other day. The worst mistake I ever made was staying here.’

‘It isn't just here.’ His arm went around her, trying to comfort her. ‘It's everywhere. Nowhere in England is safe …’ He dropped to his knees, examining David's bare arms. In places the green scum was tinged with crimson. It's right what they say. The devils are biting. Yes, you'd better both get in the bath, clean yourselves up, and then we'll treat those nasty little punctures with TCP. Whilst you're doing that, I'll just check again to make sure there's nowhere they can get into the house.’

Sheila and David went upstairs. Alan crossed to the window. Already locusts were all over the glass panes, securing their slippery footholds. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. They had a taste for window frames and sills. But they wouldn't make much headway with these. Alan laughed softly. Aluminium. That was one good thing Hatherton had done when he had converted the stables into a house.

The room was becoming darker by the minute as swarms flew at the house, covering the windows, seeing the interior but being thwarted. Alan watched them crawling only a matter of inches from where he stood. There was something about their eyes which made him shudder. The way they looked at him. Not just hate and gloating. It went further than that. A kind of superiority complex. They were greater than mankind. They had the country, the whole world, at their mercy. There was no hurry. Time was on their side, unless there was a sudden drastic change in climatic conditions. Their greatest weapon was famine. They were using it now. Clearing a whole area. Then on to another. Starvation. Death. Only the locusts remaining. He wished that Blade hadn't gone. Not that the man from the Anti-Locust Research Centre would have been able to do anything. Our boys will be able to deal with them. They were fast proving that they couldn't combat the scourge, but at least they gave you hope.

‘Alan!’ He heard Sheila's voice, the note of alarm, and hit the stairs at a run.

‘What's wrong?’ He entered the bathroom half-expecting to find a column of locusts spilling out of the taps.

‘The water's stopped!’ Sheila naked, three inches of dirty green water in the bath, David sitting in it, white-faced, silent. Sheila knelt up, struggling with both taps, her efforts producing only spasmodic trickles of water that died away to a steady drip.

He stood there. For a few seconds the locusts and the water were forgotten. He saw another bathroom, another girl, legs parted, looking up at him. Now his own wife, a different pose, more natural. Comparisons. Brunette was winning over blonde, just easing ahead. Not much. But enough.

‘Now what are we going to do?’ Sheila turned, her small firm breasts rising and falling, water dripping from the dark V between her thighs.

‘It was bound to happen sooner or later.’ He did his best to keep the alarm out of his voice. ‘But we can manage for a bit. The big kettle's full on the Rayburn. We shan't die of thirst just yet, and there's an outdoor tank down at Pat Emmerton's that's half full. I can fetch some from there later …’

Oh, Jesus Christ! Pat Emmerton! He wondered how she was faring. He felt the panic, the frustration, and brought it under control with an effort. Possibly when darkness fell he would be able to risk going out.

‘I'll try and get some water from Pat when it's dark,’ he said. ‘From what Blade says, locusts are inactive in the darkness, unless they get into a lighted room. Oh, and keep the plugs in the holes in the bath, the washbasin, the sink. They could get in that way.’

Sheila began drying herself. He watched her. Suddenly he turned away and went back downstairs. He didn't want her to see the protrusion in the front of his trousers. She wouldn't appreciate it. Not right now, anyway.

Darkness. Alan glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf and knew that it was still dusk outside. No light was getting in through the layers of locusts on the window panes. Sheila had drawn the curtains to shut out the spectacle.

The three of them were seated around the small scrubbed pine kitchen table. Three empty coffee mugs. That was their ration until morning unless he managed to bring some water up from the stables. Until that possibility was realized, they dared not draw further upon their remaining half-gallon.

Nobody spoke. David's head dropped lower and lower on to his chest, eyelids closing. Every so often he jerked upright, alarm evident on his freckled features, fading when he saw his mother and father. The dream was trying to come back again. It was hardly surprising, Alan reflected, when grim reality played its evening overture outside the house. It was quieter now than it had been half an hour ago, the strains dying to a steady low hum. A brief rest during the short hours of darkness and then the dawn chorus would erupt into full spate as day two of the siege began.

Alan was worried about his sheep, but there wasn't a thing he could do. Probably they were all dead by now. It had been impossible to hear their bleating above the noise made by the locusts. Likewise, it was equally impossible to see into the furthermost field through the curtain of insects which spilled down from the eaves like ivy that had grown wild.

Financially, it was a crippling loss. Twenty-seven ewes, purchased at just over a thousand pounds. Thirty or forty lambs that would not go to market next year. Not even meat for the freezer. The insurance would cover his initial outlay but there would be no profit. And you couldn't afford to farm if you didn't make a profit.

‘David and I will sleep on the couch in the lounge,’ Sheila announced after a while. ‘But it's so hot with the fire going.’

‘We can let it die down after dark,’ he replied. ‘But we'll have to set the alarm clock so that we're awake in plenty of time to make it up before morning. I'll get some more wood in before then.’

A loud crashing sound interrupted him, a creaking and groaning of timber in close proximity. Another crash that made the mugs on the table vibrate. Then silence. Even the locusts were still.

‘What … what was that?’ Sheila clutched David to her.

‘That was the granary.’ Alan was white-faced, tight-lipped, despair flickering in his eyes. ‘They've been gnawing through the woodwork steadily for the past few hours. There was woodworm in it, anyway.’ Try to make the best of every disaster. There'll be plenty more before we're through.

Silence again. David dozing and jerking awake alternately. Alan smoked, watching the clock, 11.15. The last locust had laid down its violin. Total terrifying silence, in many ways far worse than the unearthly insect noise.

Alan stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. The other two looked up but they did not say anything. He ought to have said something like I'm going outside. I may be some time. But his dry humour would not be appreciated. David would not understand. Sheila certainly wouldn't laugh. Bad taste. Instead, he said, ‘I won't be long.’

He didn't tell them not to open the door because he knew they wouldn't. They would still be sitting there in exactly the same positions when he returned. Only then would they retire to the adjoining room for the night.

He stepped outside, closing the door quickly behind him.

Chapter 13

Blade made good time in spite of the delays, the police roadblocks, the congested traffic in suburban areas. The further east he travelled, the more locusts he saw. Only small swarms most of the time, feeding on the remnants of ravaged fields, some devouring the grass verges.

They splatted on to the windscreen of the Range Rover with increasing regularity once he was past Loughborough, green and yellowish blobs that the wipers were unable to clear efficiently, and at intervals it was necessary to stop and clean the glass with a chamois leather. Eventually the leather had to be wrung out and Blade held his breath as the vile stench from the syrup-like locusts blood drifted up and hung in the sultry air.

7.30 p.m.

Blade climbed back into the vehicle from wiping the windscreen once more, and tried to make up for lost time. His foot was right down on the accelerator, slowing only to negotiate the remarkably deserted township of Melton Mowbray. Once clear of the built-up area he picked up speed again. On either side of the road there was evidence of the locusts having passed through: whole fields laid bare, hedges eaten down to the stools, farmers walking across their land surveying the damage. But there was no sign of the swarms. They had eaten, devastated, and carried on in search of more food. Their appetite was insatiable.

Blade was puzzled. His research so far proved that the insects were not all of the same variety. That was strange. It meant that they had not all originated from the same source. Was it coincidence that both varieties turned up in Britain: Desert Locusts ravaging the Midlands and eastern counties, American ones plaguing Wales and the West Country? Those in Shropshire had definitely come from either Pennsylvania or Maryland, the eggs having been laid in some kind of food product and escaping detection during import. As for the Desert Locusts, they were of a migratory species and could well have arrived in error and decided to stay. Two headaches rolled into one - a skull-splitting migraine. And he had to solve it.

He couldn't get the Altons off his mind. A strange couple, having qualities that didn't blend. That was why their marriage wasn't working out. There was a saying that opposite poles attract. They obviously had in the first place. Now the fuses were ready to blow.

A desert landscape all around. The locusts had come, seen, and conquered. They had introduced their native environment into East Anglia. Barren wastelands.

He glanced at his watch again. 8.20. Harper, the chief entomologist for the Ministry of Agriculture in this area had called a meeting in Sutton Bridge for 9 o'clock. A crisis meeting. By 10.30 they had to telephone the Prime Minister. It was that, serious. Play it down in the eyes of the public. For Christ's sake don't let 'em guess how big this really is. If we can wipe out the swarm on the saltmarshes it'll be a good start. But only, a start. A drop in the ocean, literally. But it'll look good. Convince them that we're winning the battle.

Bourne was deserted - not a soul in sight. Blade noticed a couple of benches and a bus stop - now just a pile of matchwood. The swarm had moved fast, not even stopping to clean up what they'd started. Usually they left nothing, so they were certainly in a hurry.

He thought about the Alton's place again, and wondered if he would ever go back. Someone would have to return there, but maybe he'd ask for one of the Min. of Ag. boys to take over. Not because he didn't like the Border counties. They were superb. Not because he didn't care for the Altons. Individually they were A1. But because of the girl who kept the stables down past ‘The Granary’ Jeez, she was dynamite! Blade wondered what the Altons would say if they found out he'd been to bed with her. Not that it was likely to come to their ears. Pat Emmerton was the close mouthed sort.

One dynamic half-hour when he was supposed to be making a phone call there. Five minutes on the line to Harper, twenty-five lying on his back being ridden like a racehorse. He didn't know which of them had made the first move. It could have been himself. He'd certainly had an erection just talking to her; she raised it up like an Indian snake charmer. After that, there was only one outcome. Any man would have done the same. But he wasn't going back there. It would be impossible to forget her, but he just wanted her as a memory, a fantasy to look back upon. Going back would mean getting involved and there would be an awful lot of complications.

Twenty. A small village that you were through before you realized it. The locusts had obviously found it that way, eating their way from one end to the other before the locals realized they had arrived.

Traffic was sparse, the occasional vehicle travelling in the opposite direction, speeding, its windscreen smeared with locusts crushed on impact. Everybody was in hiding, skulking behind closed doors and windows, listening to radio reports - as their fathers had done before them in World War II, wondering when the next air-raid was coming.

He made Sutton Bridge by 8.50 and pulled the Range Rover into the car park outside the impressive looking hotel by the wide muddy-coloured river. He was sweating, tense. This was the big crunch. No punches pulled. The true state of the battle would be unveiled.

The room, a large one overlooking some warehouses at the rear, had already been converted into a temporary regional headquarters for the operation of locust control in East Anglia. Sections of large-scale Ordnance Survey maps were Sellotaped to the walls, dotted with red and yellow headed drawing pins. A large desk stood before the window, three men seated behind it. A fourth seat was vacant. That was for Blade.

Other chairs were placed in a semicircle facing the desk, and there were upwards of a dozen men in the room. They looked up as Roger Blade entered. They had obviously been awaiting his arrival before beginning the meeting.

‘Glad you made it, Blade.’ Harper stretched out a hand, a firm and determined shake that matched the rugged features. The lines on the sunburned face were more pronounced than when Blade had last seen him, the eyes puffy as though from lack of sleep.

Harper waved a hand around the room, cursory introductions, not that it really mattered. They were all gathered there with a common purpose, to drive the locusts from Britain.

‘Right, we'll get started.’ Harper took up his position next to Blade behind the desk, shuffled some papers and cleared his throat. ‘Now, gentlemen, I think we are all aware of the position. There are locusts in our midst, and we have to exterminate them or drive them back into the sea. A month ago I would have treated this as a routine operation. Every year some locusts turn up somewhere in Britain. Solitary ones, they are to be found in all the countries of the world except Antarctica. Now we are faced with a situation that has never occurred before, locusts in tremendous swarms, ravaging Britain, disrupting communications and transport, and famine is not far away.

‘Mr Blade is a leading entomologist at the Anti-Locust Research Centre and I have asked him to help and advise us in our fight against these pests. At the moment the largest swarm in East Anglia is feeding on the saltmarshes a mere seven miles from here. There is enough grass, spartina and zos, to hold them there for another couple of days. We cannot take that chance. We have to hit them first thing after daylight tomorrow before they decide to move on elsewhere. That, if it is successful - and I see no reason why it should not be - will considerably ease the position in this area. For the moment at least. Now, if you would all look at this first map here …’

Harper moved from behind the desk, pointing to one of the wall maps; it covered the area between Long Sutton and a section of the Wash marshes. The pins on the seaward side were all red ones.

‘The big swarm,’ Harper went on, ‘approximately two miles north-east of the place marked here as Shep White's, once a farm. Not even the farmhouse stands there now. Just marshes. We can spray heavily without fear of damage to the environment. Six light aircraft are scheduled to take off from Holbeach at 4.45 a.m. on this mission. Within a short time of that we should be aware of our degree of success. But, unfortunately, that is not the full extent of the problem.’

He moved further on to another map, one that covered the North Norfolk coastline from Hunstanton to King's Lynn.

‘These yellow pins’ - Harper tapped the map, in a way that revealed an underlying sense of anger against the enemy, sharp raps as though he was already crushing them – ‘represent hoppers, locusts which have not yet attained their powers of flight, yet represent a menace as real and possibly even greater than the flying swarms. They are on the march like soldier ants, eating everything before them, working their way northwards, parallel to the coastline. Their destination is not certain. Are they heading out to join the swarm already on the saltmarshes or is it a pilgrimage intended to take them right the way up the east coast, maybe even as far as Scotland? We do not know, and we cannot afford to delay in the hope that we can exterminate them easily on the Wash. Spraying presents hazards in this type of terrain, and therefore we must combat them as they do abroad. Mr Blade, perhaps you would kindly give us some advice on the control of hoppers.’

Blade stood up, scanning the faces in front of him, then fixing his eyes on the map with its advancing line of yellow dots.

‘We've got to strike quickly,’ he said. ‘Very quickly. They could go anywhere, and it is essential that operations are begun first thing tomorrow. The A1067 from Heacham to Docking represents our best - and last - line of defence. Metal barriers must be erected along it. They won't stop the march, but they will serve to divert a large proportion of the locusts where we want them ... into specially prepared bait traps. Dieldrin should do the trick. With luck we can hammer seventy-five per cent of 'em. Then, when we see where the survivors are heading, we can give 'em another dose. After that, we shall have to rely upon local fanners. A very simple sprayer can be used which is operated by the exhaust gases of a vehicle. Land Rovers will be ideal. An exhaust nozzle sprayer will produce a very fine spray of insecticide which the faintest of breezes will distribute downwind. The vehicle can easily carry about thirty gallons of Dieldrin, which, when applied at twenty per cent in oil by exhaust nozzle sprayer, can be used either to spray the hoppers themselves or directly on to strips of vegetation, the latter system being similar to the one of poison bait. The droplets of insecticide which drift on to the vegetation poison any hoppers which feed on it, even though the deposit rate of Dieldrin may only amount to two ounces per acre. Owing to the persistence of Dieldrin, the lethal quality of such a strip will last for several weeks. As groups of hoppers tend to move in the same direction, applying the spray in a series of parallel lines across the direction of the march is an efficient control technique. If a hopper does not eat enough contaminated vegetation to kill it on one spray line it will take a further dose on the next, and so on until it dies. It will be necessary to have spray lines over an area of five miles to ensure that the majority of the hoppers are killed. Now, any questions before we go on to the question of air attacks?’

‘Yes.’ A young man wearing RAF uniform, probably a pilot, spoke up. ‘Aren't these locusts laying eggs all over the place as they ravage? Will the insecticide destroy the eggs?’

‘A good point.’ Blade pursed his lips and rubbed his chin, ‘Yes, the adult locusts are laying millions of eggs as they go. Of course, a change in the weather would render the eggs infertile as well as killing off the adults, but we must be realistic and face up to the fact that there is no chance of climatic conditions altering during the next few days. Therefore it will be necessary to destroy the eggs. Actually, here, two birds can be killed with one stone. The devastated fields will have to be ploughed for re-sowing. The sooner this is done the better, as the locust eggs will be thrown up on to the surface and either eaten by the birds or scorched by the sun.’

‘What about bait for the hoppers?’ Harper asked.

‘Sawdust is probably the best and most convenient,’ Roger Blade replied. If we use about a thousand tons, transported from every available sawmill, about a ton of Dieldrin mixed with it should be fine.’

‘Tell me’ - a tall man in the uniform of an army major rose to his feet at the back of the room – ‘where did these locusts come from?’

‘Basically,’ Blade said slowly, trying to hide his own uncertainty; it was anybody's guess really, ‘they are migratory Desert Locusts, probably en route to somewhere from Africa, and blown off course. There are reports of them having landed on the Canary Islands a matter of weeks ago, but their stay was short. Just a resting place. Then they hopped over to the British Isles. Sixteen hundred miles is not impossible for a single flight. There is another possibility, which even I am reluctant to accept, and my colleague here, Mr Harper, will at once say that it is impossible -’

‘Let's hear it,’ Harper grunted.

‘The locusts on the western side of the country have all the earmarks of those found in the southern half of the United States, Pennsylvania, Maryland. It could just be that the eggs came over in some product -’

‘Impossible!' Harper snapped. ‘Any entomologist worth his salt will tell you …’

‘That locust eggs can only hatch in moist warm soil,’ Blade smiled. ‘But they are also capable of laying eggs that eventually hatch out in the bark of trees. So, just suppose that a particular swarm decided to lay, not in the trees themselves, but in the fruit. Now, let us take an example, a peach orchard. The fruit carrying the eggs is harvested and exported. We know that in the colder spring conditions of North Africa incubation can take up to seventy days, instead of the average fortnight in warmer places. So by the time the peaches reach England the locust eggs are about ready to develop. In other words, Britain is the victim of an amazing coincidence. Not just one plague of locusts, but two, both arriving from different sources. We are not geared up to dealing with the pest, and whilst we have had to call various councils of war and plan the assault, they are ravaging and breeding, multiplying to unbelievable proportions. That, gentlemen, is the position. The whole country is in unbelievable chaos and the sole responsibility is ours. Let us pray that our aerial and ground attacks tomorrow are successful!’

Six light aircraft took off from the small Holbeach runway shortly after first light the following morning. Fanning out into a single line formation they headed eastwards, gaining height, the pilots searching the flat landscape below them.

There was little greenery to be seen; the parched fields, almost totally devoid of vegetation, blended into the brownish grey of the mudflats. The spike grass of the saltmarshes was only visible in odd patches, the overall appearance was like one of the initial construction stages of a motorway, a quarter-mile-wide track that had been blazed by the ravenous insects, as symmetrical as the work of man himself. An ugly scar which despoiled the wild beauty of terrain over which Nature still held sway.

The locusts have no king, yet go forth all of them by bands.

A few minutes later the leading pilot saw the locusts, a moving mass, roughly a mile square, heading northwards in an uncannily formed shape, only the ragged tail breaking up the symmetry. He began to lose height at once, the others following, spreading out at intervals so that once they hit the swarm it would be totally covered. One hundred feet. Overhauling them. Overtake before spraying so that the insecticide drifts back with the wind on to them. Hell, they'd hoped to catch the bastards feeding. It shouldn't make much difference, though, as long as the Dieldrin hit them fair and square. Blade and Harper had argued over the use of Fenitrothion. They had settled for Dieldrin for the present. Cautious.

Level with the swarm. Down to fifty feet. The pilot paled. Jesus Christ, there were tens of millions of the buggers. Any second now!

Suddenly he was aware of something pinging against the underside of the plane like a long-range shotgun blast. Vicious. A rising column of something that blotted out the daylight. The cockpit suddenly darkened. Thousands of tiny bodies flattening on the toughened glass and spewing out their vile innards in an opaque scum. Jesus Christ!

Six planes caught in a desert sandstorm, an instant hail of blinding death, minute bodies sucked into the engines, clogging them almost immediately. Only one spray gun in action, cutting a path through the attackers as it hurtled earthwards, spinning out of control. The might of the living spitfires overcame the power of the bombers in a surprise counter-attack that lasted no more than a couple of minutes.

A line of planes ploughed into the mud of the Wash as though performing some death-defying stunt. Dull splashes, the mud gurgling its sudden delight at this glut of victims, sucking them down into the mystic depths which reputedly hid royal treasure.

Another plane following on behind rose steeply, and circled at three hundred feet. The pilot was sweating, trembling. It was incredible. He would not have believed it had he not witnessed it with his own eyes. One second the spray force were diving in on the enemy, the next the planes were being knocked out of the sky by a massive twisting monster that rose up from the mudflats in anger, exacting its grim vengeance. It was all over in less than a minute. Now, only the wing of one aircraft was to be seen, sticking vertically out of the mire, a headstone marking the airmen's grave.

Then the locusts were back in their square formation, tail snaking angrily at the rear, speeding on a course of death and destruction. The pilot wheeled again, and headed back to base.

Blade looked down from the helicopter, his expression grim. Harper sat directly behind the pilot, all the marks of the morning's defeat etched deeply in his haggard features. A total victory for the enemy, six planes and six human lives in one attack. Locust losses made no difference. If they lost six million from their ranks, the formation would spread out to close the gaps. The casualties would not even be missed.

Below them the dark green horde reminded Blade of a river filling a dry bed after a drought, relentlessly creeping onwards, swirling, stopping, swirling again. Before them lush vegetation, behind them … nothing. They devoured everything in their path.

‘Christ, I hope we can stop this lot,’ Harper muttered. ‘I've got to make another report to the PM when we get back. He's like a bear with a sore head. Couldn't understand how we'd failed. Wanted to send out a fighter squadron. Short of a nuclear bomb, nothing will stop the big swarm. Well, one of the big swarms. Fifteen more sightings yesterday. I don't think any county has fully escaped, up as far as Cumbria. Then it'll be Scotland's turn. A diet of heather on the moors. And then what, Blade, when everything's gone? What then?’

‘Us, maybe.’ Blade licked his lips. ‘They're already biting humans. They've tasted flesh. When there's nothing else to eat they'll either cross over to the Continent or start on us. Damn it, that lot on the Wash were on the wing just after dawn. They should have fed for at least a couple of hours first. This is what's beating us. They're not acting according to form. They're crazy. Crazy enough to do anything. They heard the planes coming and just went right up at 'em. At least these bastards can't fly. Yet …’

The helicopter hung back. On no account must the locusts be frightened away from the course they were taking. At the moment they were bang on target, heading for the wide main road which intersected the countryside as straight as a wooden ruler across a large-scale map. Tarmac melting in the hot sun, and on the far side a two mile barricade of corrugated steel sheeting. Every few hundred yards were large dumper bins turned on their sides, spilling their contents out on to the road, sawdust and wood shavings. A locust's banquet … one that packed a knockout punch!

‘They've stopped,’ Harper snapped. ‘No, they're going forward again. Hell, I thought they'd had a sudden change of mind and decided to head inland. I wouldn't put it past the cunning bastards.’

‘They won't turn now,’ Blade assured him. ‘We've got 'em this time. Only a hundred yards or so to go to the road.’

The leading hoppers emerged on to the hard surface. One bunch stuck fast in a patch of soft warm tar but those behind walked over the top of them, creating a mound two or three feet high. Darting everywhere, seeing, smelling appetizing food and - lots of it.

A living roadway, merging into the bins of bait, each container several inches deep with locusts. Blade gave a loud sigh of relief and grinned at Harper. Beyond the roadway they could see several Land Rovers, early models with upright exhausts, belching clouds of fine spray into the air. The spray lines were being laid across the fields, a series of death traps that would take care of the survivors from the roadway assault.

Harper gave the word and the pilot pulled away, wheeling and taking a direct course for Sutton Bridge. The man from the ministry felt relief surging over him. At least he would be able to report some measure of success.

‘You can't win,’ Harper groaned as he rejoined Blade in the operations room. ‘No way.’

‘What now? That was a one hundred per cent success.’

‘Oh, sure. But what's a few hundred million hoppers when there's about another ten billion sighted on the south coast?’

‘New arrivals?’

‘Must be. There was no report of a gradual build-up in that area. They just appeared. Dorset is the worst hit area. They've created one hell of a bloody panic, I can tell you, right in the heart of the holiday season. Most of the holidaymakers, it seems, are seeking refuge on the beaches. General opinion is that they're safe there. But the overall picture is the very worst we feared. The whole country is grinding to a halt. There are so many side effects, like a strike that stops a multitude of production lines and in the end hits the consumer. The media aren't pulling their punches. In fact, there's mass hysteria from John-o'-Groats to Land's End.’

‘The Government will have to call a state of emergency.’

‘As you well know, they won't do that until it's too late. The PM was dithering, blaming me, all the entomologists in Britain, saying we should have realized what was going to happen. Then he climbed down a bit, and asked me what I thought he ought to do. The Minister of Agriculture is busy telling everyone not to panic, but he can't come up with anything more positive than that. In the meantime, the PM has called an emergency cabinet meeting. He's going to speak to the country on radio and television tomorrow night. And whilst everybody's dithering, the locusts are steadily eating Britain so far into the red that even the International Monetary Fund won't be prepared to fork out for this lot.’

‘I don't see much point in my hanging on here,’ Blade mused, ‘not now that the hoppers have been dealt with and the big swarm has passed on. If you haven't any objections, I think I'll head back to London in the morning and sift through all the reports.’

‘It's up to you,’ Harper sucked, in his lips. ‘I guess one place is much the same as another right now.’

Blade was on his way down to the dining room when the receptionist emerged from her office at the foot of the stairs.

‘Oh, Mr Blade,’ she smiled, ‘there's a message for you from your office. Would you telephone this number in Shropshire as soon as you can?’

He glanced down at the pencilled figures on the piece of paper which she handed him. They seemed to leap out at him, emblazoned in neon lighting before his eyes. He had had a feeling all along that he wasn't going to shake off Pat Emmerton that easily.

‘Thank you.’ He managed to smile, and walked towards the payphone in the booth at the other end of the passage. In all probability he would not be going back to London after all.

Chapter 14

Alan Alton stood listening in the lane outside ‘The Granary’. Total silence. He moved, and something crunched under his foot. He winced, envisaging the pulped body, the thick yellow matter spreading over the sole of his shoe.

He dared not use a torch. Unnerving as the darkness was, he knew that he was safer than if he showed a light. At least, Blade had said that the locusts would not swarm or attack after night had fallen. He hoped the entomologist was right.

Alan walked quickly, keeping to the centre of the narrow road. It was unlikely that any of the creatures would choose to spend the night roosting on a bed of gravel chippings.

A light shone from the front window of the stables. By its glow he saw locusts clustered on half-demolished window frames, clinging to the walls. He knocked on the door and called out, ‘It's me. Alan.’

He heard movement's from within, light footsteps, a muffled, ‘Oh, thank God!’ There was the sound of a bolt being drawn, the door dragged open a foot or so, and Pat Emmerton's slim figure was silhouetted against the light. Her long hair was straggled and matted, her blouse ripped so that he could see the cups of her bra, and there was a blotchy swelling on her left cheek. He pushed past her, shutting the door after him.

‘It was awful.’ She leaned against him, and this time her nipples did not dig into his chest. ‘Oh, God, I thought it was all over.’

‘It's all right now.’ He held her close. ‘The worst's over.’

‘Not by a long way.’ She knew that he lied. ‘The swines are eating their way through the attic, or rather they were until it got dark. They've stopped now, but it won't take them long to get down through into the bedrooms once it gets light.’

‘You'd better come back to our place,’ he said. ‘We're holding out all right. The only trouble is we've run out of water. I thought maybe if we filled a few containers and got them up there while it's still dark …’

‘I couldn't leave the horses,’ she blurted out, ‘they're going nearly crazy, charging about in their stalls, locusts all over them, covering the walls and roof. I went out there about an hour ago. Every time I shone the torch swarms flew around like moths.’

‘Look, the horses won't be any worse off whether you're here or with us. But you will be once the locusts get into the house. That's a nasty bite on your cheek. You'd better let me fix it.’

She was silent for some moments. She knew that what he said was true.

‘Maybe you're right, Alan. But why hasn't anybody come to our rescue? Surely somebody must have seen what's happening?’

‘I'm afraid not.’ He shook his head. ‘Everybody's too concerned with trying to keep out of the way of the swarms. They're everywhere. Right across the country. I saw the late news on Two. The Prime Minister's going to talk to the country tomorrow night. At the moment he's holding a crisis cabinet meeting. He'll call a state of emergency.’

‘That's a laugh. He'll upset the lefties or the unions, or some extremist groups who'll rap his knuckles.’

Alan was relieved to see her smile.

‘By the way,’ she went on. ‘I telephoned Mr Blade's office and told them what was happening. He rang back from somewhere on the East Coast. Said he'd come on the run, first thing in the morning.’

‘The devil he did!’ Alan felt a momentary pang of jealousy. He almost said, ‘A lot of use he'll be,’ but checked himself just in time. ‘We'd better see about carting some water up to our place.’

‘There are some plastic five-gallon containers in the outhouses,’ she said, ‘but we'd better not show a light.’

They went outside and rummaged in the dilapidated sheds adjoining the stables. The main woodwork had collapsed, and as Alan groped for the empty drums in the debris he sensed tiny bodies everywhere, wings that fluttered in alarm. Once he thought he could see a myriad of red eyes winking like stars on a frosty night, but he told himself that it was his imagination. Anyway, they're only large grasshoppers. Stick insects. Kid yourself Alan, or you'll go off your rocker.

He found three cans and together they filled them from the tank in the yard.

‘I'll carry two,’ he said, ‘if you can manage the other one.’

‘Fine. I'd better put the light out and shut the front door. No good making it too easy for them.’

As she walked back in die direction of the house she heard the telephone ringing, a harsh jangle that was somehow a relief, an everyday mundane sound that meant that life went on, more or less as normal, somewhere. A thought crossed her mind. Blade? She pushed the door open and went inside. Her hand stretched out for the receiver but just as her fingers made contact with it the ringing suddenly stopped. Instant silence, cold and foreboding.

‘Damn!’ she muttered. It was no good trying to ring Blade's office. They probably wouldn't want to contact him again, particularly in the middle of the night; and even if they did, suppose it hadn't been him ringing? What the hell would she say then? Hurry up, Rog, I'm lying here in the nude desperate to he screwed. There's locusts hanging from the ceiling but don't worry about them.

She went outside.

‘It stopped before I got to it,’ she told Alan.

Five minutes later they were struggling into ‘The Granary’. Sheila came down the stairs, clad in jeans and blouse. Instead of donning her night attire she had changed her clothes and combed her hair so that it fell in long dark ringlets on to her shoulders. She nodded to Pat. I expect you will be staying with us for the night. I've made up the couch in the lounge.’

‘Thank you.’ Pat did not miss the implication - my husband will be sleeping with me, no matter what!

‘What about David?’ Alan asked.

‘He can sleep with us. He mustn't be left alone.’

‘All right. Let's be extravagant and have another coffee. So long as we've got enough water to see us through tomorrow we can always refill these canisters from Pat's tank again after dark.’

David was already sleeping on the bed upstairs. The three of them sat at the table, staring into their steaming mugs, all busy with his or her thoughts. Uppermost in their minds was the locusts. Tomorrow would be an ordeal. They wondered if they could hold out.

Sheila was tense, and she knew that it was not just because they were under siege. She tried to tell herself that she had nothing against Pat Emmerton. There was no reason to be suspicious of her. Yet she hadn't missed the way in which the girl glanced at Alan. Not just Wow, I fancy you, boy glances. More physical, almost as though she was infatuated with the male body. Well, a lot of women were. Deep down she was the same. But she couldn't bring herself to show it. There had been that one occasion, the time she had got pregnant. Try as she would, she could not recapture that atmosphere. The setting, the pine woods, had had something to do with it, she was certain. In a way they had relaxed her, brought her out of herself almost as if she and Alan had been the only, humans in the whole world, the entire universe. Then everything had declined. Why, oh Jesus, why? Her upbringing had a lot to do with it, she was sure. That constant advice from her mother, like a needle stuck in a record groove - don't cheapen yourself … don't cheapen yourself … don't … Sex was sinful, according to her mother. Just about permissible in marriage if you wanted children, a duty to your husband but you weren't supposed to enjoy it. Close your eyes and think of something else until it was all over.

She wondered if it was too late to throw the mantle of inhibition away. Had Alan slipped from her? He didn't seem to bother much about sex, never pestered her these days. Pester. That was another of her mother's favourite terms. Pester. That was what the locusts were doing, pestering. The last few days were like a nightmare. Sunday was the worst. She had really meant to walk out on Alan. At least, she thought so. But fate had combined with other factors to bring her back. One other factor, this girl with the strawberry-blonde hair who eyed her husband up all the time. Slyly. That was why she hadn't gone. Pat Emmerton. Jealousy? Not entirely. Much, much more. Sheila needed sex. Her body cried out for it, had been doing so for a long time, but she had ignored her most primitive instincts. A kind of inexplicable stubbornness. You're not meant to enjoy it. I never did. Oh, God, mother, shut up. You've done enough harm already.

Pat glanced furtively from Alan to the small dark-haired girl. Prudish, you could tell. Domesticated. She had no right to be up here. Her place was in a nice comfortable town semi, existing conventionally, relying on the corner shop to provide all the needs of the household, having the evening meal ready sharp at six for when her husband returned. Not Alan. He didn't fit into the picture. A man in a pinstriped suit with soft hands, a creature of habit. Screwing on Sunday mornings under the bedclothes, each trying to convince themselves that they were doing it because it was a duty towards the other. Sunday lunch, a joint from the supermarket, a ride in the car in the afternoon if it was fine and dry. Not if it was wet, principally because the car would get all muddied up. Telly in the evening, and back to Monday morning. No, the girl didn't fit in up here. She had almost chickened out, but hadn't even the courage to do that. But she wouldn't make it. No way. Hell, she probably couldn't even ride a horse. How would she cope with poultry and other chores that were expected of a smallholder's woman? Christ, why didn't you piss off last Sunday, woman? Alan and I could have managed both places: Hell, I wouldn't want to get involved. Not even an affair. Just two people who know how to fuck properly and got together and screwed when we needed it. Most nights, but that wasn't an affair. Pat wasn't in love with Alan. Only with men, certain types. He just happened to be one of them. Marriage was out of the question. She had learned her lesson, a bitter one. However, none of them were going anywhere right now, maybe not ever. She shivered at the thought.

Alan sensed an embarrassment building up inside him. Everybody he had any feelings for whatsoever were cooped up in this prison alongside him. He hated those creepy little bastards outside more than he had ever hated anything in his life. Yet he owed these two women a debt he could never repay. Pat had somehow brought Sheila back to him and rekindled a tiny ember that had all but extinguished itself. Possibly he could make something of his marriage but he would have to work at it. As for Pat, she couldn't figure in the set-up even as an outside interested third party. In that way she would destroy that which she had salvaged, himself and herself as well. She had told him that she didn't want a relationship, but all prospective mistresses said that in the beginning. But at the moment there wasn't much he could do about it. They were all trapped here, with no immediate prospect of getting out in the future. Play it as it comes.

‘Do you think there's a chance that these locusts might move on?’ Pat was the first to break the long silence.

‘I don't know.’ He drained the last of his coffee. ‘They should do, but from what I've seen of them they seem pretty settled, almost as though they want revenge on us. As though they won't be satisfied until they've burst through our barricades.’

‘Don't say that,’ Sheila grimaced.

‘I can't really see them getting in if we're careful,’ Alan , went on. ‘The window frames are all aluminium. And we can keep a fire going in the grate in the lounge. Tomorrow night I'll see if I can block the fireplace up securely. It's just a question of how long we can last out on food and water. If we can fetch water from the tank each night we should be OK. What about food?’

‘A few days,’ Sheila groaned. ‘They really caught us at a bad time. If winter had been coming on the freezer would have been full. As it is, there are a few convenience items …’

Relying on the corner shop, Pat thought. Now we're all going to pay for it. ‘There's virtually nothing in my fridge, either,’ she said, and felt guilty. I'm as bad as she is.

‘Say a week, then' - Alan was making mental calculations – ‘if we're careful. They ought to have moved on long before then. I can't really understand why they're here now. The smoke drove the big swarm from Black Hill to the Rock of Woolbury. One would have thought that they would have headed lower down in search of vegetation. It's almost as though something has driven them back, a sudden retreat, an unwillingness to join up with the other locusts. Now wait a minute’ - a sudden idea occurred to him - ‘I wonder if they could be persuaded to move on …’

‘How?’ Sheila asked. ‘A few squirts from the fly-spray canister?’

‘No, something that's moved them once already. Fire and smoke.’

‘But the Black Hill fire has already virtually died out. There's nothing here to burn, not even fields of dead grass. And we don't want to set fire to ourselves.’

‘I wasn't thinking of that.’ He sat upright, suddenly enthusiastic. ‘How about if we celebrate November the fifth early? There's loads of dry wood outside where the granary has collapsed. I could work reasonably safely in the darkness, building a bonfire on the vegetable garden, and that's only thirty yards from the house. You know how you complained about the smell of smoke when I made that bonfire there just after we moved in, Sheila? Well, the locusts are going to be an awful lot more upset about it than you were.’

‘But it wouldn't burn for long enough.’

‘Perhaps it wouldn't need to. A few clouds of thick black smoke and these devils might well decide to leave us alone. It's worth a try, anyway.’

‘I'll give you a hand,’ Pat said.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You get some rest. It shouldn't take me all that long. It won't be easy in the dark but I'll manage.’

He went outside. The deathly stillness of the sultry night was overpowering, eerie. All around him the enemy squatted on the roof and hung from the walls, aware of his movements. Patient. That was the most terrifying part. They knew. They weren't even alarmed, confident that at daybreak they would be resuming their attack, terrifying the human occupants who skulked in their small stone fortress.

‘Bastards!’ Alan muttered, and found the axe lying outside the back door.

He dared not use the torch. Everything had to be done by feel, pulling at the fallen timbers to see which were capable of being moved, wincing as his fingers made contact with sleeping bodies. He swung the axe blindly, bringing it down with venom, encouraged by the thought of sleeping locusts being severed in half, beheaded. It gave him sadistic satisfaction. He had an advantage over the enemy whilst darkness lasted. They were powerless, at his mercy.

He sweated, carrying and dragging heavy beams across to the patch of bare garden that had once been a few rows of greenery amidst the parched and baked soil. He did not hurry. The job had to be done properly, the bulkiest timbers laid in a criss-cross formation at the base so that the air could circulate, a foundation to support the high mound. He was fully aware that locusts still clung to his bonfire, refusing to be dislodged from their perches in transit. That was fine. The more the merrier when the flames began to shoot upwards.

He noticed that the light had gone out in the bedroom. Sheila had retired for the night. Pat was probably curled up on the couch in the lounge. He carried on, sweating and cursing, now enjoying his task, delighting in the prospect of striking the match shortly before dawn, cremating thousands of the insects before they were aware of what was happening.

Would Roger Blade really come? Alan had no doubt that the man from the Anti-Locust Research Centre would make the attempt. For Pat Emmerton. It didn't matter why he came so long as he did. He was used to locusts, understood them. He might have some ideas for driving them off if the smoke failed. Anyway, he was a fighter. He wouldn't just sit around and do nothing.

The pyre was almost complete. Alan could just discern its outline against the skyline. It looked good, as good as he would have built for Guy Fawkes night. Plenty of stout dry timber, placed securely in latticed tiers. It would last an hour or two.

His feet dragged as he went back indoors. Christ, he was exhausted. So long as he didn't oversleep in the morning. If the bonfire wasn't lit before dawn they'd never be able to get outside to light it. Another thought troubled him. What about when Blade arrived? They couldn't open the door to admit him. The locusts were thick in the porch. They'd stream inside in their thousands. It would be impossible to keep them out.

The lounge door was wide open. He peered inside. The embers in the grate threw out a faint glow, enough for him to make out the shape of the girl stretched out on the sofa. She was naked. He hadn't expected to find her any other way. It was stifling, you could barely breathe. Her face was turned to the wall, her slim figure portrayed from the rear, perfect in every way. He had to force himself to turn back and mount the stairs.

Sheila was still awake, David lying on the far side of the bed nearest to the window. Alan didn't switch on the light. It might have spoiled everything. She was naked, too, facing him; She watched him undress, not saying anything, not asking how he had fared, whether the bonfire was built to his satisfaction or if the locusts had troubled him any.

He set the alarm clock, and lowered himself on to the bed alongside her. They faced each other, and he felt the warmth of her breath as her lips found his.

‘Is David asleep?' he whispered.

She did not reply. He sensed her fingers on his thighs, tracing a path downwards, then back up, and he stiffened as they began to rub him slowly, sensuously. He hoped that she would not ask why he already had a full erection. She didn't. The fact that he was aroused was sufficient for her.

The alarm jangled harshly, vibrating on the flimsy bedside table. A warning siren.

Alan stirred and gently disengaged himself from the embrace that had lasted throughout the night. Reality again. Another day to face. He dressed hurriedly and went downstairs, grabbing the box of household matches off the dresser as he made for the door.

Outside there was an intermittent insectile buzzing. The eastern sky over Black Hill was paling slightly, heralding the false dawn. It would be another twenty minutes before genuine daylight made its first appearance, but already the locusts were stirring, eagerly anticipating day two of the siege. Some of them were louder than others, ready for battle, sensing victory.

He reached the pyre and stooped down, crumpling some newspapers and thrusting them into the base. He was tense, pulses racing, starting to sweat, fingers fumbling with the matches, spilling some of them on to the ground. Always the fear that he was too late, that there would be a pre-dawn stirring, a sudden attack, swooping down on to him, cutting off his retreat, bearing him to the ground by sheer weight of numbers.

The match between his fingers stuttered and burst into flame. By its glow he saw them, crouching thickly on the broken beams, spitting venomously. Red eyes glowing their hate.

‘Burn you, bastards!’ He watched the newspapers catching fire, tongues of flame spreading quickly, and turned away. He ran. He could not help it, sprinting madly for the house, throwing open the door, banging it shut behind him, and leaning weakly against it. Sweat rolled down his face. Christ, that had been the worst moment of all, wondering if he had really made it. He had.

He went to the window and looked out, relief surging over him as he saw the flames catching on the timber, crackling, sparks shooting upwards, sizzling madly. Tiny bodies being consumed. A sudden exodus from the upper structure, a tiny cloud of flying objects that disappeared into the darkness beyond the fire.

He put the kettle on the Rayburn and lit a cigarette. So far so good. There was a faint pattering on the windows, scuffling sounds from the walls and the roof as though mice were active. The enemy were taking up their positions, the orchestra tuning up for its grand promenade concert. The day was about to begin.

While he waited for the kettle to boil Alan's mind went back to the previous night. One woman had aroused him, another had satisfied him. And it had been good. Very good. So gentle, too, hardly a creaking spring to cause David to stir in his deep slumber. The boy had slept well, and that was a good sign. If only he didn't have to endure the horror of another day of terrifying locust activity.

Alan had intended to take the others a cup of tea, but before he had finished filling the teapot both women appeared in the room, fully dressed.

‘Rise and shine,’ he grinned, ‘it's going to be a great day.’

They laughed. It was a good sign. Nobody was cracking yet.

‘Nice bonfire,’ Sheila said, ‘It stinks like hell.’

‘It'll need to.’ He reached down three cups. ‘All we need now is for it to get light, then we'll be able to see how it's working out.’

Tap-tap. Click-click. Thousands of pairs of claws scraped the outside of the windows. The panes were covered, only odd patches here and there allowing the dawn light to filter in. Crawling, seething, spitting. Some of the locusts had died during the night and their corpses lay on the sills. The living were busy starting to eat them, breakfasting hungrily.

Sheila turned her head away. ‘God, how awful,’ she muttered. ‘Nothing but cannibals.’

‘The more they eat of their own kind,’ Alan laughed, ‘the fewer there will be to worry us. Maybe that's what they'll do when all the vegetation is gone, feed upon each other until there are no more locusts left in Britain.’

They drank their tea, and then Alan went back to the window, attempting to peer out through the milling mass. Smoke swirled like a November fog, and through it he could see the leaping orange flames, the crackling of the wood audible above the humming and crunching. He could smell the fire, pungent fumes that made him cough. One or two of the locusts were becoming restless, but there did not appear to be any signs of a mass exodus.

‘Well?’ Pat moved to his side. ‘What's happening in the front line?’

‘Can't see much’ - he tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice – ‘but it's early days yet. There's a hell of a lot more wood to burn.’

‘They don't seem particularly troubled.’

‘A few are shifting. Look, that one's snuffed it. Ah, they've got him! Look how they're fighting over him.’

‘It's repulsive.’ She turned back to Sheila. ‘It's going to be a long day.’

All three returned to the table. They would have liked more tea but the water had to be strictly rationed. No more before elevenses. Even with fifteen gallons in stock they could not be absolutely certain of being able to fetch more when night fell.

The temperature rose as time passed. They could feel the heat from the fire in the garden, an inferno which was reaching its peak. However, the kitchen was becoming darker as more and more locusts swarmed and settled on the windows.

‘Why aren't they moving?’ Sheila had a note of despair in her voice.

‘I don't know, frankly.’ Alan switched the light on again. ‘Maybe the wood isn't giving off enough smoke now it's got going. Ideally, I could have done with some damp undergrowth on the top. But there just isn't any undergrowth left, damp or dry. We've done our best.’

‘What time is it?’ Pat asked.

‘About nine. Breakfast time. Who's for toast, barbecue style?’

Nobody laughed. Sheila began cutting some slices off a loaf of bread and buttering them. Bread and jam, continental fashion - sorry no rolls. They decided to make some coffee. They needed it.

At half-past nine David came downstairs. He was trembling, on the verge of tears.

‘Mummy.’ He went to Sheila, putting his arms around her waist. ‘There's locusts all over the bedroom window. They're looking at me.’

‘Not really.’ She fondled him. ‘They're just clinging to the glass. They can't get in. They won't hurt you. Now, come and have something to eat, and afterwards I'll read you a story. How's that, eh?’

He nodded and asked, ‘Why did Mr Blade go away’

‘They sent for him to go to Lincolnshire. There are a lot more locusts there than we've got.’

‘Then I'm glad we don't live there. Is he coming back?’

‘He'll be here some time today.’ Pat Emmerton said, attempting to boost her own confidence.

Maybe, Alan thought, and maybe not. Once they thought they heard a vehicle but it was impossible to be certain above the din which the locusts were making. Time passed. Minutes dragged into hours. The temperature rose, and outside on the vegetable garden the last of the timbers collapsed in a shower of sparks, the leaping flames dying down to a smouldering pile of ash.

And the locusts showed no signs of leaving.

Chapter 15

It was 8.30 a.m. when Roger Blade backed the Range Rover out of the hotel car park in Sutton Bridge. He had slept reasonably well in spite of the previous day's contrasting results against the locusts, and now, having breakfasted early, he was prepared for the long journey back to the Welsh borderlands.

The drive as far as Ashby-de-la-Zouch was comparatively uneventful. A few small swarms of locusts were to be seen on the already devastated countryside, but there was no sign of the horde which had eaten its way from west to east.

The town itself was practically deserted, just a few tradesmen sweeping the pavements outside their premises, brushing the dead locusts into the gutter. Advertisement boards had had every vestige of paper stripped from them by the hungry raiders and the majority of woodwork bore evidence of their passage. Everybody had an air of urgency about them, a desire to finish their chores and return to the comparative safety of their dwellings. A fruiterer's was open, the entire stock being displayed behind the large front window. A handwritten notice caught Blade's eye: Cabbages and Caulis, £1.50 each, While Stocks Last.

He whistled. The locusts had sent the inflation rate soaring.

The flow of traffic increased once he was clear of Ashby, almost every vehicle having some trace of thick green scum on its windscreen. Paintwork was scratched. The roads themselves had the appearance of a coating of shiny oil, drying in places, but still greasy. He reduced his speed.

A mile farther on the traffic came to a standstill. Cars and lorries, engines ticking over, some drivers getting out in an attempt to see what the hold-up was. The line of vehicles stretched beyond the next bend, and Blade was unable to ascertain the cause of the trouble. Nothing moved. Nothing came through from the opposite direction.

He was on the point of climbing down into the road when he heard the scurrying of running footsteps and shouts. Those who had gone forward to look were coming back … on the run. Others, too, a dozen or more. Shouting. Hurrying.

‘What's up?’ Blade, driving door open, shouted at the approaching people. Their expressions were those of shock and horror turning to panic.

‘Bloody locusts,’ a fat man, hatless, cheeks puffed out, yelled without checking his stride. ‘Bleedin' road's covered with 'em back there. Inches deep. Comin' this way!’

Hoppers, Blade thought, and slammed his door shut. He glanced in his driving mirror. Damn it! There were other vehicles behind him, the nearest right up against his rear bumper. The drivers were piling out into the road, joining the retreat on foot. No chance to back up.

He remained where he was. It was his best hope. All windows closed, engines off so that the insects were not sucked in. Sit tight. People still stampeding by, a woman screaming.

Hoppers, of course. Doubtless from the eggs which the flying swarms had laid in the fields as they ravaged the crops.

Then he saw them, the leading regiments stretching across the full width of the road, inches deep in places, spilling over the abandoned vehicles, infiltrating through any gaps they found. Blade winced as they swarmed over the Range Rover. He'd once sat out such a marching band in Saudi Arabia nearly ten years ago. He'd been in a Safari Land Rover then. The march had lasted for two hours and at the end of it he'd been almost suffocated. Christ, this lot didn't look any different. He just wished that he had some idea of their overall area. Probably there were 20,000 hoppers to the square metre. They seemed to be following the road, possibly because there was no vegetation left in the fields and their instinct told them that it led somewhere. Always the quest for food.

He saw them stripping the hood from a sports car, three vehicles in front, tearing, gnawing, and then the interior of the Range Rover was reduced to the blackness of a starless night. He sweated profusely. A lifetime spent researching these creatures, a dozen experiences of being caught in their midst in places as far afield as Ethiopia, but this was a thousand times worse. Uncanny. Weird. Because they had no right to be in England. The same species which he knew, in shape only, but their behaviour was in total contrast, unpredictable. Swarms from hell sent out by the devil himself to destroy the world.

Blade prayed that they would not find a way inside his vehicle. He prayed that the living stream would peter out, and that he would be left alive to continue on his way. That something would happen to destroy them, an act of God as inexplicable as their presence here. But nothing happened. They came on and on, spilling down the road like dried peas on a factory conveyer belt, no sudden thunderstorm from heaven to wash them into the gutters and drown them.

He had checked his wristwatch at the outset. He looked at it again when finally daylight began filtering back into the interior of the Range Rover. One hour of blackness. Now they were past, the ragged tailend of the band just visible in his mirror. Gone! Back to the town, cleaning up anything which the flying swarm might have overlooked. Blade recalled those grossly overpriced cabbages and cauliflowers. Unless the shopkeeper had closed his doors in time the locusts would most certainly have cleaned him out.

Blade tried his engine. It started sluggishly, and then picked up as the dead locusts on the fan were thrown clear. He turned off the ignition. A reconnaissance on foot was advisable first.

Dead hoppers squashed beneath his shoes. There were still odd live ones about, demonstrating once again their cannibalistic tendencies. He ignored them. In small numbers they presented no threat.

Beyond the first bend abandoned vehicles stretched down the wide road as far as the eye could see. There was no chance of getting through with the Range Rover, for in one place a car and a lorry had collided, slewing sideways on. One or two people, the sensible ones, were still in their cars, sitting dazed and white-faced. He ignored them and approached the crashed vehicles. In all probability nobody had raised the alarm over this accident. Even if they had, it was doubtful whether there were ambulance crews available to deal with it. According to the ten-thirty news, which he had heard on the radio, all services were at full stretch.

He climbed up and peered into the cab of the lorry first. The windscreen was smashed, but there was no sign of the driver. Doubtless he had fled with all the others. The car, a white Allegro, had the front pushed in. Blade could see the occupant, sprawled across the blood-soaked front seats. There was blood everywhere, even dripping out on to the road from beneath the buckled door.

One glance inside was enough. Blade jerked his head away, closing his eyes in an attempt to shut out what he had seen. Death had been instantaneous, the driver of the car being thrown forward on impact, the steering column smashing into his chest. His skull had hit the windscreen with the effect of an egg being hurled against a brick wall. Smashed wide open, blood and brains splashed over the whole of the interior. At least, that was what Blade supposed had happened. It was difficult to tell exactly and he wasn't going to look again. The locusts had explored the open wounds. Many of them were still there, drowned in human blood. One hopper was making valiant attempts to survive, clinging to a piece of split cranium with one claw, trying to drag itself from the bloody quagmire. It wouldn't make it.

Blade walked away. Hell, this was only one incident among hundreds up and down the country. One fragment of gore in a massive bloodbath.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He spun round, relaxing when he saw a dishevelled young man in a shirt that looked as if somebody had been trying to rip it up to use for dusters.

‘Did you see 'em?’ Wide-eyed, hysteria escalating fast. ‘My God, did you see 'em?’

‘I saw them,’ Blade sighed.

‘Then what's being done about them? Where are the army, the police? Why aren't the government acting? It's diabolical. I'm going to write to my MP as soon as I get home. I'm …’

‘A bloody good idea.’ Blade humoured him, slowly leading him away from the crashed vehicle. On no account did anybody in this man's state want a peep in there. ‘Tell you what, son, you go on home and compose a letter, in the strongest possible terms to your MP. Send a copy to the Prime Minister, and -’

‘Only too bloody right, I will.’ The other was walking fast now, angrily, ahead of Blade. ‘I pay my taxes, and I've a right to be protected as a law-abiding citizen. That letter will go in tonight's post, first class.’

And it'll never be delivered. At least, not while the locusts are here. Blade watched the man's attempts to back a Mini out from behind a bread van. The van's back doors swung open on damaged hinges and he had a full view of the shelves inside. A few crumbs were left and the hoppers which had made the find were busily cleaning up the remnants of their feast.

He arrived back at the Range Rover and consulted a road map. It was no good trying to go forward. He could still make it back towards Ashby although he could hear the traffic queue rapidly building up behind him. People were walking down the line of cars. Some, it appeared, had no idea of what had happened. That meant that the hopper band had cut off the road somewhere between here and Ashby.

Blade scanned the map quickly. A turn-off a mile or so back on the right would take him on a direct course south to the A5. Technically, it was a straight run into Shropshire after that, but he would have preferred to keep off trunk roads. There were frequent traffic reports on the radio of massive tailbacks, several miles of crawling traffic. He'd have to chance it. He reversed, edged backwards and forwards a few times, and then swung round on to the opposite side of the road.

He switched on the radio. A break in the pop. Congestion on the Exeter bypass. Trouble on the M6 due to single-file traffic past roadworks, and another lane closure further on. They didn't say why. Drivers were experiencing difficulties in Cumbria. Jesus, a hard winter had nothing on this. Everybody was fleeing somewhere, most of them didn't know where. Townspeople were quitting the towns, country folk thought it was safer in the towns. One hell of a mix-up. And nobody had a clue how to sort it out.

Blade checked his watch again. 2.10 p.m. He could, with luck, be with Pat Emmerton for bedtime. And right now he needed that more than he'd ever needed anything in his life.

The Prime Minister faced the cameras and adjusted his bifocals. An annoying wisp of greying hair was pushed back into place. Suddenly he had lost his façade of well-being; I've got some bad news for you but everything's going to be all right and there's no need to panic. His usual television smile barely made it as far as a sickly grin. He cleared his throat again, and thought about the general election which was almost a certainty in the autumn. That made him feel worse. Nevertheless, he had to tell the nation exactly what was going on. No punches could be pulled.

‘As you are all aware’ - he dropped his gaze from the cameras to the typewritten sheets in front of him – ‘we are in the midst of a plague of locusts which has somehow arrived in this country. Obviously the freak climatic conditions are to blame and it would only require a drop of several degrees in the temperature to solve this problem completely in a very short time. Unfortunately, even our long-range forecasters cannot see an end to the drought, and thus we must take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the safety of the British people. For that reason we have had no alternative but to call a state of emergency.’

He paused, let the words sink in. Try and make it sound as though it's the complete cure.

‘This will entail movements of the armed forces in almost every aspect. The latest tragedy, the crashing of a Boeing 707 on to the main control area at Heathrow Airport, in which three hundred and forty-three lives were lost, has resulted in the closure of that airport. Already Elmdon and Gatwick are closed on account of huge flying swarms of locusts in those areas creating a danger to air traffic. We cannot risk another major disaster.’

‘At the moment there is no hindrance to shipping ports but difficulty has arisen in the transport of foodstuffs and other vital commodities from these places. The swarms have brought about a number of serious road accidents and five major motorways have had to be closed. Traffic has been diverted on to other roads, but congestion is causing problems. Thousands of cars are reported to be heading for the coast. Not’ - try a little smile, take the pressure off a bit – ‘for the purpose of annual holidays, but in an attempt by many people to flee the country. Consequently, vital food supplies are being held up, and we have no alternative but to place a temporary ban on the use of all private motor vehicles from midnight tonight in an attempt to ease the situation.’

‘Be sensible. Stay at home. The locusts are widespread and your journey may take you into the thick of a new ravaging swarm. Remain in your houses, and listen to radio and television broadcasts which will report the latest locust movements. All emergency services are at full stretch. Fire brigades are attempting to bring under control a host of woodland and heath fires. Most major hospitals are overcrowded, trying to cope with casualties.

‘You must play your part’ - give them a sense of responsibility, make them feel big – ‘and I beseech you not to panic. I am disturbed by recent reports of mass hysteria in some of our leading towns and cities. Mobs have been rampaging in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Newcastle, to mention only a few places. Shops and supermarkets with remaining stocks of food have been ransacked. This kind of behaviour can only result in widespread famine’ - it's here already, most of the country's food gone and supplies from abroad only trickling in – ‘and in order to combat this certain items of food will be rationed. Coupons are already available at your local post offices.’ Printed during the haulage and dock strikes last year.

‘Be patient. Be calm. A situation such as this cannot last for any length of time. Leading entomologists are certain that with the coming of September, when the temperature will inevitably drop, there will not be a single live locust left in this country.’

September, six weeks away. We could be cleaned out and eaten alive by then. Don't mention the attacks on humans. Isolated instances, anyway.

‘That, then, I regret to inform you is the situation at the moment. I have given you the bare facts.’ And hidden a few of the worst. ‘I have every confidence in my ministers to see that the necessary steps to combat this menace are carried out as efficiently, and with as little inconvenience to the general public as possible. I shall talk to you again in a few days, and by then I hope to be able to inform you that this crisis is well under control and there is a chance of a return to normality.’

‘In the meantime, remember, there is a state of emergency which is for the benefit of every one of you. Stay at home, and don't panic. Good night.’

The cameras focused on the Prime Minister a second or two after they were supposed to fade out. The nation caught a brief glimpse of him shaking his head in total despair, lips pursed. The enforced attitude of benevolence evaporated, and in that brief period many thousands of prospective votes for the continuation of his government were lost.

6.20 p.m.

Blade had covered only twenty miles in the last three hours. With a sigh of relief he saw the signs ahead for the Wellington bypass, the brief stretch of unfinished motorway which gave one some respite from the toils of the A5. Everybody would be using it, but at least for the next four miles they would be moving slightly faster than the existing crawl.

There were lines of private cars of every age and make, but all of them crammed full of luggage, roof racks overloaded, impatience filtering back down the lengthy queues. Horns blared the frustration of the drivers, a few attempted to overtake but the vehicles in front closed up to deny them. There were several accidents - people getting out, pushing the damaged cars on to the side of the road, ignoring the injured.

There were also a host of breakdowns, mostly due to overheating, the petrol evaporating before it reached the carburettor. Bonnets raised, hopeless expressions, selfishness dominating. Blade had witnessed two fights, the owners of stranded cars attempting to force their way into mobile vehicles, boarders being repelled viciously. He kept his doors locked. He couldn't afford to take anyone along. There was no point. He was bound for the thick of the battle.

He wondered how the Altons and Pat Emmerton were faring. It was strange, the locusts returning to a barren area, spurning the lowlands in preference for higher ground. There had to be some reason. They were behaving even more uncharacteristically than previously. It was no good trying to work out what they might do next - they were so unpredictable that they generally did exactly the opposite of what one expected. Everybody had been caught unawares.

At last he topped the brow of the hill. The line of traffic in front edged down towards the motorway filter. Standing out starkly in the west was the Wrekin, a barren mountain on a flat landscape, a cloud hovering above it, moving, first to the right, then to the left, as though buffeted by conflicting air currents. Blade knew it was locusts, a massive swarm. Again, they had sought upland territory. A kind of pattern was slowly emerging. The Lincolnshire myriads had gone north, maybe heading for Yorkshire, then Scotland. High ground. Why? Something was definitely happening. Once he reached his destination he would telephone the office in London. Right now the staff of the Anti-Locust Research Centre would be busily moving red and yellow drawing pins on the wall maps. They might know what was going on.

Edging forward again. A stark landscape below him on his left. Hedgeless fields that moved. He turned his head and watched carefully. During the past week he had witnessed miles of terrain buried beneath the teeming locust hordes. But this was different. Not just the movements, the colour - mostly black and white …

Suddenly a section rose into the air, an acre of flapping wings, going down again, settling, merging with the background.

‘Christ Almighty!’ He braked just in time to avoid hitting the bumper of the stationary car in front. ‘Birds! Thousands of 'em. Gulls and crows mostly, cleaning up the dead locusts!’

It was only to be expected. Those hens at the Hatherton farm, once they had overcome their initial fright, had recognized the locusts as food. It was no different amongst other forms of birdlife. The swarms scared off the birds in the first instance, driving them to fresh quarters. Then the birds realized there were pickings to be had if they returned and cleaned up the casualties. He ought to have realized it before. In Ethiopia, the White Storks followed the Desert Locust Hoppers, cleaning them up more efficiently than any amount of ground or air attacks by man. Now it was happening here. They had realized, they had massed. Maybe they felt that there was safety in numbers, seagulls and terns from every rubbish tip and pool in the county, whole rookeries converging just as they followed the plough in spring. Feeding gluttonously. Jesus Christ!

A horn blared behind him, and Blade was suddenly aware that the traffic was moving. Faster now. The motorway ahead was easing the congestion.

Three packed lanes, the average speed 25 m.p.h. That was certainly an improvement. Of course, there would be a bottleneck where they filtered back on to the A5.

Roger Blade noticed the tanker up ahead, a giant amidst the line of cars. Idly, he wondered what it carried. Dieldrin on its way to Wales? It could have been one of a thousand different chemicals, not necessarily insecticide.

The road surface was greasy, a scum created by squashed locusts, drying in places, but hazardous like spilled oil distributed by a heavy shower at the termination of a dry spell. Blade eased his foot off the accelerator, giving himself a reasonable braking distance. Almost at once a battered old VW forced its way from behind, almost scraping the traffic in the centre lane, and cut in.

‘Stupid bugger!’ Blade was just in time to prevent himself from blasting on his horn. There was no point. Everybody was blowing. Nobody took any notice.

35 m.p.h. One had the sensation of speeding after the hours of stop-start.

He looked down at the petrol gauge. Hell, he should have filled up earlier. He'd thought about it, but most of the roadside filling stations out of Lincolnshire had been closed, large notices proclaiming ‘No Petrol’ on their forecourts. Massive fill-ups by the fugitives had drained the pumps, and there was little likelihood of further supplies being delivered in the near future. The locusts had their own picket lines, inches deep.

The dipping sun was blinding, forcing Blade to pull down both visors. Everybody was accelerating again, up to 40 m.p.h. now.

Then a screeching of brakes, tyres screaming their protests on the locust slime, cars slewing, bumping, shunting. Blade would have managed to stop before he hit the VW in front had not the Transit van behind rammed into him. The impact threw him backwards. As his front bumper crunched into the VW, his seat belt taking the strain, he was hurled forward, the car's corroding bodywork buckling and splintering in a cloud of rust. Sideways on, a skidding Mini hit the offside wing and was thrown into the middle lane. A concertina.

Blade tore at his seat belt fastenings. He was shaken but unhurt. People were clambering from their cars, those that could make it. Many were trapped, screaming, cursing. The air was rank with the stench of burning rubber, smoke curling upwards from all around. Behind him Blade heard cars still thudding into each other as the greasy surface demonstrated the fullest extent of its danger.

Then, everything else was forgotten. Silhouetted against blinding evening sunlight a giant ballet was in progress, spotlighted in the centre of the stage. The tanker. Slowly, gracefully, it was jackknifing, spinning, sliding. Cars in its path were shunted to one side. A sudden straightening up that caught centre lane traffic like a whiplash, sweeping them to one side. Bulldozing, now ugly to watch, ploughing through the outside lane, mounting the central reservation, an angry dragon breathing fire and smoke, seeking out its victims in a fit of rage, pouncing, crushing, gnashing its teeth on screeching metal.

Rolling over, flattening cars and vans, then coming to a steaming grinding standstill, hissing its contempt for lesser vehicles. People watched, unable to move, stark horror numbing every nerve.

Then, without warning, the strewn carriageways erupted into blinding flame, fire that exploded, caught, exploded again, running, leaping, spreading, disintegrating everything in its path. The sound of the explosion was only heard by those furthest from the scene, the cars crunched or waiting half a mile back. An inferno that travelled faster than sound for the first hundred yards.

Blade never heard it. Blinding scorching flame obliterated everything. There was no time to scream or wonder why. A searing heat that nothing could withstand, melting metal and bodies within seconds of being caught up in the fiery whirlwind. On and on, overhauling those at the rear who sought to escape, disintegrating their bodies in full flight.

Five hundred yards further on it slowed and settled down to a steady burning, the flames from one car igniting another, exploding petrol tanks adding to the carnage.

Annihilation. More thorough even than the locusts. Only the furthermost travellers in the traffic queue escaped, many of these badly burned, fleeing, ripping blazing garments from their scorched bodies.

Blade was somewhere in the midst of the holocaust, just one of hundreds of corpses that would never be identified, adding his own contribution to the stench of roasting flesh that drifted in all directions across the windless summer sky.

There were no ambulance or police sirens. Only the screams and wails of the survivors. Back at the intersection drivers began reversing their cars, seeking an alternative route, leaving the dead to bury their dead, the injured to die where they lay. There was no rescue, because none was available. Maybe tomorrow the Red Cross or the army would be diverted to the scene. At the moment there was no help on hand.

The swarm of locusts settled on the Wrekin, almost a square mile of them. It was time to begin roosting. Another day was gone. Another victory. A few hours of darkness and then they would begin to ravage again.

Chapter 16

‘Well, it doesn't look as if Blade's coming today.’ Alan Alton drew the curtains in the kitchen to shut out the locusts still clinging to the windows. They had not lessened in spite of the numbers which fell dead on to the sills and were at once devoured by their living colleagues. The fire on the vegetable patch was now a heap of dead ashes, not even smouldering. It was quite clear that his attempt to drive the swarms away had failed miserably.

‘Maybe he's waiting until after dark. It could be safer travelling by night.’ Pat Emmerton tried to boost her own confidence but her tone lacked conviction. She knew in her heart that Roger Blade wasn't coming.

‘Could be,’ Alan said. ‘Well, having listened to the Prime Minister we now know what we have to do. Stay indoors and be patient, and in due course all will be well again!’

‘Do we have any choice?’ Sheila made some coffee and poured three mugs. David was upstairs. She wondered if he was asleep yet. In a little while she would go and check.

‘We'll go down and fetch some more water in a bit, Pat.’ Alan slumped into the nearest chair. ‘God, it seems hotter than ever.’

‘I'll go with you, Alan.’ There was a determined look on Sheila's face.

‘No, it's all right …’ Pat began.

‘I insist,’ Sheila snapped. ‘It's my turn tonight.’

Suddenly they heard frenzied footsteps running across the bedroom floor directly above them, down the stairs. The door burst open, and David rushed into the room.

‘Whatever's the matter?’ Alan envisaged an upper storey full of locusts, the insects having found some means of entry at last.

The boy rushed to his mother, burying his face against her. Sobs racked his body, but they did not have the essence of fear in them, rather grief and sorrow.

‘What's the matter?’ she repeated, kissing his forehead. ‘The locusts can't get in. We're quite safe.’

‘It's … it's’ - he struggled to get the words out – ‘it's Bunty?’

‘Bunty!’ Sheila looked across at Alan and Pat. ‘That's his rabbit. Out in the hutch at the back …’ Her words tailed off.

Damn, Alan was annoyed with himself. They ought to have brought the rabbit inside. It had been forgotten with the coming of the locusts, and David had been so distraught. But it was too late now. The wooden hutch was doubtless demolished and eaten by the insects, and as for Bunty…

‘Look’ - Alan tried to be both firm and kind – ‘there's nothing much we can do about it now. I doubt whether Bunty will have come to much harm. If the locusts have eaten the hutch then he will have run off somewhere to hide. Probably in the woods. I'll bet that as soon as things are back to normal he'll come running back looking for his bowl of bran.’ Like hell! There'd be neither bran nor rabbit left.

‘The foxes might get him.’ David burst into a fall flood of tears.

‘Not Bunty,’ Alan said. ‘He's too clever for the foxes. But when Mummy and I go out to fetch the water, after it's properly dark, we'll keep our eyes skinned to see if we can see him. How's that?’

‘Can I come with you? Please?’

‘No,’ Sheila was adamant. ‘If Bunty's around we'll find him. If not, then we'll just have to wait and see if he turns up.’

David tore himself from her embrace, and ran back upstairs, his feet hammering on the stairs, the bed creaking as he flung himself on to it. His crying reached a pitch, then slowly died away to total silence.

‘Poor kid,’ Pat said, ‘I know just how he feels. I feel the same way about the horses. Look, Alan, I shall have to go down there tonight whatever happens. Maybe we all ought to go.’

‘Somebody will have to stop with David.’ Sheila stood up. ‘I know I don't have to go, but I thought that maybe a break, only for a few minutes, would do me good, even with those creepies out there. I feel if I stay in here much longer I'm going to go berserk.’

‘We'll make two trips then.’ Alan stood up and crossed to the window, easing the curtains apart, trying to see past the insects which clustered there. ‘Another quarter of an hour and it'll be dark enough. Pat and I'll go first, then when we come back, Sheila can come out with me. Don't forget, we've got to see if by some miracle there is any sign of Bunty.’

‘All right.’ Sheila relaxed. ‘God, I only wish that when we wake up in the morning there'll be no sign of the locusts.’

‘There's a chance.’ Alan tried to boost her morale. ‘Maybe when another day dawns they'll decide it's time they moved on somewhere else.’

Slowly the buzzing outside was dying down, dropping to a hum that was barely audible. Finally silence. The three of them looked at one another. Somehow the cessation of locust activity seemed far more hostile, the complacency of an enemy that knew that it was wearing them down. Soon, those under siege might crack altogether.

‘I still think we ought to take the pickup and make a run for it,’ Sheila sighed.

‘And how far d'you think we'd get?’ Alan replied. ‘On three gallons at the most. There are locusts everywhere. Half the country is in hiding, just as we are. You've seen on the telly what has happened to those who tried to run and got caught out in the open. Most of the roads are blocked, and now there's a ban on private transport. We don't even know if the road down to Clun is clear.’

‘I guess you're right.’ She felt the despair mounting up inside her, threatening to burst into hysteria at any moment. ‘Go on, you two. Go and see to the horses and get the water.’

Alan stepped out through the front door followed by Pat. The floor of the porch was inches deep with locusts, huddling together, a heaving mass as they breathed.

She held back, repulsed, afraid.

‘Follow me,’ he whispered, ‘don't look at them. Don't look down. Imagine that you're walking on washed gravel that gives beneath your weight.’

Crunching, cracking everywhere. Once he almost slipped and fell as the soles of his working boots became areas of syrupy slipperiness.

‘There's millions of them.’ Her tones were hushed. ‘More than there were at the start.’

He did not reply. He was only too well aware that she spoke the truth. The numbers, the volume, had obviously increased. Doubled, trebled. Why? And they did not seem to be in any, hurry to leave.

They went to the stables first. Ballad snorted and rose to his feet as Pat shone a torch briefly on him. The horse's eyes rolled, and he backed away. Locusts were entwined in his mane, dead ones sticking to his sides where he had been rolling on the floor. The walls and roof were covered, and only the main beam was supporting the tiled roof. Not even traces of sawdust remained of the rest of the woodwork.

‘It might collapse on him if they eat through that beam,’ she muttered. ‘He can't stay here. He'd be better off outside in the paddock.’

‘He's as well there as anywhere. Out in the open he's at the mercy of the whole swarm. They'll chase him from here to Land's End, and there are no hedges left to keep him in.’

‘I suppose you're right.’ She moved to the next stall and gave a little gasp of horror as she shone the beam over the side, flushing dozen of locusts which flew up at the torch.

‘The filly,’ she cried, ‘she's … she's dead! Oh, God!’

‘Yes.’ Alan slipped an arm around Pat, and drew her away. ‘She died of fright, I'd say. Come on, there's nothing we can do for her.’

Weeping softly, Pat checked the other two horses. They were still alive, but exhausted, lying down on the stone floor, not a wisp of straw remaining. They had survived the day. That was about all.

‘Isn't there anything we can do?’ Pat fought back her tears as they began filling the containers from the tank.

‘Not a thing. Just wait and pray.’

‘I'm going to try and get through to Blade's office again. At least I'll let them know we're in trouble.’

He made no attempt to dissuade her, following behind her as she opened the door. She shone the torch inside, and as the beam picked out row upon row of stringy bodies along the old-fashioned picture rail, she stepped back. There was a whirring of tiny wings. Alan felt the sharp stinging impact of their bodies lashing his face. One settled. He slapped at it, its wings fluttering as it hung on. ‘Jesus Christ!’

‘What is it?’ Her voice was tinged with terror, the light blinding him as she shone it full in his eyes.

‘Switch that torch off, for God's sake!’ The wingbeats died away as darkness rolled back. ‘One of the bastards bit me. Bloody sharp, almost like a wasp's sting.’

‘My turn to tend to you when we get back,’ she muttered. If your wife will let me near you. I'm going to try that call.’

She groped in the Stygian blackness, hands outstretched, not daring to shine the light again. Ugh! The devils were roosting all over the telephone. She swept her fingers along the instrument, dislodging them. Her skin crawled, every nerve in her body was stretched to breaking point. Locusts even clung to the dial.

She began to dial, remembering each digit carefully, Alan's arm around her, steadying her. 0-1-3- A screaming monotone from the earpiece. Harsh, deafening.

She made two more attempts and then banged the receiver back on to its cradle.

‘Dead’ she whispered. ‘Nothing but the bloody screaming abdabs.’

‘It's not surprising.’ He drew her close, sensing that she wasn't far off breaking. ‘A lot of overhead lines are down. The locusts have eaten the telegraph poles.’

They went outside again, Alan carrying two of the containers, Pat struggling with the third.

‘We never looked for that rabbit, did we?’ she reminded him as they neared ‘The Granary’.

‘I had a glance as we came by,’ he lied, not wishing to embark upon a futile exploration trip amidst the increased swarms of roosting insects. ‘Nothing. We can't do anything about it. The rabbit probably died of fright.’

They squelched their way back over the locusts in the porch and staggered into the kitchen, depositing their load by the door.

‘Well, at least -’

Alan never finished what he was going to say. The scream came from the landing. Hysterical, the ultimate in fear. Sheila's breaking point had been reached.

Alan leaped for the stairs, seeing Sheila at the top, holding on to the rail for support. She started to scream again, then saw him, and checked herself.

‘What's the matter?’ He took the steps two at a time, his strong hands reaching out for her.

‘David!’ She tautened, trying to wrench herself free. ‘It's David!’

‘What's the matter with him?’ Alan wanted to shake her to hurry the words which formed soundlessly on her lips and then died. ‘Where the hell is the boy?’

‘He's gone.’ Her reply was little more than a whisper, as though she had exhausted the whole of her vocal powers in that scream. ‘He's not in the house. He's gone. Out there … with them!’

They stared at each other, stupefied, trying to find some reason for disbelieving. Everything's all right. He's sleeping quietly. In his own room? Ours? Sheila had searched the house, Alan knew that much. She wouldn't have missed him. It was no good trying to make out that she had. If he wasn't indoors, then he had to be out of doors. A simple process of elimination and the findings must be faced. Why? It didn't matter.

‘We'd better go and find him,’ he said with a calmness that surprised himself and quietened Sheila. The sudden horror of the discovery that their son had gone missing had numbed them both like a shot of painkiller.

‘I'll come with you,’ she said. ‘Of course, he's gone to look for that damned rabbit. I should have known he would. He must've crept downstairs and out of the back door. We don't even know how long he's been gone. Let's hope he's not gone far.’

Pat stood back. She knew how they felt and she made no suggestions because there were none to make. Alan and Sheila would go out into the night amidst all the terrors which it held. They might be back within a few minutes. It could be hours. Whatever happened, they had to be safely indoors before dawn broke. Only during the hours of darkness was there any degree of safety.

She watched them go, heard them treading a path round the outside of the house, leaving a trail of crushed locusts in their wake. Then she went through into the lounge and stretched out on the sofa. There was nothing else she could do. Except wait; and she could not remember the last time when she had prayed.

‘The hutch is somewhere here,’ Sheila said, ‘in the corner by the fence.’

Alan flashed the torch quickly, an on-off movement of the switch that barely gave the nearest locusts time to fly up in bewilderment and anger. It told him all he wanted to know. One length of twisted mesh netting remained where the woodwork had been eaten away from the staples. That was all. No Bunty. And no David.

‘David,’ he called. ‘David … David!’

The night air took up the echo, carrying it across the fields, bouncing it back off the hills in the distance. David … Dav … id … Da … aa … vid.

Then silence.

‘He must have heard,’ Sheila whispered.

‘Probably,’ he replied. ‘But that doesn't mean he's going to come back. He's disturbed, upset about the rabbit, and he's not going to give up that easily.’

‘Perhaps he's gone across the fields, down into the valley.’

‘I doubt it. I don't think even Bunty would persuade him to go down into that valley again. My guess is that he's headed up into the forestry.’

‘Oh, God, we'll never find him up there. There's hundreds of acres of dense thickets. He could be anywhere.’

‘Not really. He won't be in the dense thickets because it's job enough to force your way into them even in daylight. He'll stick to the forestry roads and the rides. Most likely the roads. There's six miles of them, in a circle. You begin at the main entrance by the Fiddler's Elbow and keep on going, and it brings you back to where you started. There's only one problem. We don't know which way he's gone round, if he's gone round. We could be following him, in which case there's every chance that he will return home before we do. On the other hand, if we choose the opposite route we might just meet him. Unless he's gone off down any of the intersecting rides. We'll have to make our minds up how we're going to tackle it. It's like tossing a coin, heads to the right, tails to the left. Come on, let's get down to the Fiddler's Elbow. He might not have gone too far.’

It took them about ten minutes to reach the wide entrance into the extensive woodlands, walking quickly, the lane itself almost devoid of locusts.

David … David … Da … aa … vid!’

Only the echoes answered, more muffled now that they were beneath the thick dense pinewoods. A shuffling and rustling amidst the trees, like a flock of migratory starlings, restless at the approach of man. They knew, however, that it was not starlings.

‘Into the woods, then.’ Alan came to a decision and took Sheila's hand. ‘We'll go left.’

They walked rapidly, the slate surface of the road easy to follow in the darkness. It was a relief not to be treading on locusts. Frequent movements on either side amidst the interlocking branches of closely planted firs; there were big swarms in the plantations. Alan guessed that they had moved in the previous day. Why? Only Blade would know that, and he knew that the research man wouldn't come now. Half the big wood had been destroyed by fire; you could still smell the burnt landscape in the atmosphere. But the locusts didn't seem to bother. Their habitat had been ravaged in the blaze but they had returned to occupy what was left, bringing many more with them.

‘David ... please, David!’ This time it was Sheila who shouted. She listened to the echoes dying away, plea … ea … ease. Nothing. No answering call. ‘Oh, God, where can he be?’

They walked on in silence. Alan dared not use the torch in case it brought whole swarms of the creatures hurtling out of the trees at them. If David was in the vicinity he would hear them and come … or would he? The thought made Alan go cold. The boy had sneaked off with one purpose in mind - to find his rabbit. David was a determined child. The chances were that he would not return until he had achieved his aim or … Alan didn't want to think about the alternatives.

They shouted at intervals of a hundred yards or so. After a time they did not expect to hear any answering call. Their voices were becoming husky, and Sheila leaned more heavily on Alan. She was feeling the full extent of her exhaustion, her strength draining away. Oh, God, why didn't she take David to safety when she'd had the chance? But was there safety anywhere? At least he wouldn't have run off like this in the town.

Suddenly, she fell forward, her foot catching in a deep pothole, her hand slipping from Alan's. She hit the ground, tasting the slate dust in her mouth, gritty and harsh.

‘Are you all right?’ Alan was bending by her side, his fingers exploring her, anxiety in his voice.

‘My ankle …’ she groaned. ‘I think I've twisted it. Oh, God!’

He felt her ankle, heard her sharp intake of breath. At least it wasn't broken. A sprain or a twist. He helped her slowly to her feet, her full weight leaning against him.

‘See if you can stand on it?’

She put her right foot gingerly to the ground, still holding on to him, then clutched at him, falling against him. ‘I can't stand on it. Oh, whatever are we going to do, Alan?’

‘We'll rest for a few minutes,’ he said calmly, encouragingly, hiding his own despair. ‘Then maybe we'll go back. We're about a third of the way round the hill. I'm inclined to think that David isn't up here after all.’

‘But we can't just abandon him. I'm not going to. You'll have to leave me here, and …’

‘No way. I'm not leaving you on your own. In all probability David's back at the house, sitting on the sofa with Pat and wondering what he's going to say to us when we get back.’

‘No, he isn't. He's here somewhere. I know it. And I'm not going back without him.’

They sat on the uneven surface in silence. Alan kept glancing up into the eastern sky. There was a long time to go before daylight, but he kept seeing the sky getting lighter and lighter; heard the musicians of death beginning to tune up in readiness for the start of day three.

Christ, he knew they couldn't hold out much longer whether they got back or not. All of them were starting to crack.

Pat Emmerton lay in the darkness of the lounge. Alan and Sheila had been gone over three hours. Her despair mounted. Barely two hours until dawn. There was still plenty of time, of course, but it all depended upon how far the boy had gone, how far they had to come back when they found him. If they found him.

She was tired. Her body ached, crying out for sleep. A feeling of utter helplessness engulfed her. They were trapped as surely as if they had been marooned on a desert island surrounded by killer sharks. In fact, they would have been safer there because sharks weren't able to come up on to dry land. Locusts infiltrated anywhere and everywhere. And they couldn't be kept at bay for much longer.

The strain was telling on her. Jesus, she felt like going out there, yelling at them to take her and get it all over with. Nobody was coming to their rescue, that much was quite clear, because everybody else was in trouble, too. Maybe not quite as bad as this, but it was everyone for himself. Blade might have come, though. Surely he would not abandon them … her, anyway. Not after what had happened between them. If he didn't come, then it was because something had prevented him. Not just a summons back to London. Something like the locusts!

Alan was changing, too. She noticed it, but couldn't put her finger on the reason. He didn't look her up and down in the same way that he had in the past few weeks, a mute I'd like to screw you, Jesus I would. Perhaps because he had screwed her, got it out of his system. A challenge that had been met and won, and now existed no longer, She didn't really think so. It had been good. For both of them. You always knew how a man felt by the way he reacted afterwards. The type who couldn't wait to get dressed again usually didn't come back for more. Not that it had happened many times in her own case.

She wondered how Steve would have coped, here, a prisoner, prolonging the inevitable, spinning your life out as much as possible, clinging to the last few hours desperately. Knowing that in the end you had to die, but always hoping for a reprieve.

There would be no eleventh hour let-off. The locusts weren't suddenly going to take off and leave them. It was as though three people and a boy had been singled out for revenge by the whole species. There was no logic. Insects were illogical, anyway. They didn't think like that. They were here for a reason. Here in the hills, and the stables just happened to be here also.

It would be best to put the horses down first. She wrung her hands together, agony. Not just her own. Ballad. The other two. The filly was out of her misery, but she'd died the way no animal ever should, subjected to a ceaseless fluttering, biting, suffocating end. The others weren't going to suffer like that, she was determined. Alan had a gun. When he got back she would ask him to go down there again and shoot them. Horrible. Murder. But quick and painless, sparing them the morrow, the third day. If he came back.

She fell into an uneasy doze. Dreams. The Altons had not returned. Daylight. All alone. The shotgun. Shoot herself. No, the horses first. Drifting away, merging into blackness, a void where even her dreams faded and died.

She awoke, a slow process where reality slowly filtered back, in stages, like somebody breaking bad news to you, leading up to the worst.

God, it was light! Not pitch blackness, anyway, a sort of semi-gloom, jagged patches of sunlight on the windows amidst the locusts which hung there thicker than ever. Scratching, tapping. Buzzing. Louder … louder.

She screamed as reality made its full impact felt. The locusts were on the insides of the panes, on the walls, the picture rails, stringing down from the light fitting. All over her!

She scrambled up, rolled off the couch, landed on a springy surface, one that gave way beneath her like an old mattress sagging in the middle. She tore frantically with her fingers, ripping the first few from her body, but then there were too many, three and four deep, fighting each other to get at her. Crunching, tearing, blouse and jeans being eaten from her as she writhed and convulsed.

Sheer force and terror brought her to her feet, swaying, grabbing a mantelshelf that lived and moved. Ankle-deep, more streaming in through the door, some flying, yellow-bodied hoppers scurrying, those on the ceiling watching, providing the musical accompaniment, many dropping down to join in the feast of human flesh.

Somehow, she made it as far as the kitchen. A tremendous crash greeted her arrival, and through the creatures which obscured her vision she saw the top half of the Welsh dresser topple across the room, splintering in half, locusts feeding ravenously on the wood. Their weight had been too much for it.

The door hung open, and more of them poured in. Somehow they had forced entrance. Possibly Alan and Sheila had not closed it properly when they left and the moving mounds of locusts piling up against it had done the rest.

Instinctively, Pat was fighting her way towards the door. She knew there was no hope, that she was going to die. Yet she wanted to end her life out there in the open, not cooped up inside this house of death.

Naked, the insects swarming over her flesh with an increased zest, biting, scratching, spitting. Pain spreading to every part of her body, she fell choking to the ground, dragging herself in the direction of the open door, eyes closed.

She knew she was outside by the warmth of the sun. God, it was later in the day than she'd supposed. Not that it mattered. The Altons hadn't made it, either. They were dead, all three of them. Dead … dead.

Oh, Christ, kill me quickly, you bloody little bastards. Don't play with me. I want to die!

Her breath wheezed from strained lungs as she fought her last fight. Dying wasn't easy. Just as she thought it was all over the mass covering her would move. Air seeped in. Enough for another breath. All sticky. Blood. Hers or theirs Heaving, retching. Never had liked the doctor pressing down on the back of her tongue to look at her tonsils, swallowing vomit and drowned locusts. Kicking, growing weaker all the time. Consciousness slipping away from her, sliding into a bottomless abyss, floating … floating.

The hottest part of the day, an overhead sun beating down relentlessly. No respite. The only sound the steady humming of insects, rising and falling, busily feeding on human carrion.

Chapter 17

Long golden beaches stretching the whole length of the rocky coastline, the sea a deep scintillating blue in the distance, the ebbing tide about to flow again. Crowds of holidaymakers clustered on the hot sand, a common enough sight at any seaside resort in the height of the summer season. Yet, something was lacking. Atmosphere. Families huddled together rather than sprawled and relaxed. A few children, the very young who did not understand, made sand pies and dug castles, but their laughter was instinctively moderated by a feeling of awe. An outdoor temple where everyone was silent as though fearing the wrath of some pagan god.

Many of them had unpacked suitcases with them, the newly arrived not even seeking lodgings. Some had spent the night here. They would do so again. It was warm enough. Safe enough.

Few gazed seawards. All eyes were focused on the promenade, the upright trunks that had once sprouted palm leaves, now ugly skeletons, the vegetation gone. Piles of deckchairs without canvas, remnants of ice cream stalls, guesthouses and hotels that had an air of dilapidation, broken windows, scarred woodwork.

A few people were to be seen attempting to clear up the debris, half-hearted token efforts. Cars lined the road that led to the south beach. Empty vehicles, hastily abandoned, parked where they had stood in the long queue. Everything had come to a halt when the locusts arrived.

The beach, you'll be safe on the beach. A stampede, some of the fugitives trampled underfoot. Everybody had fled on to the sands, and few had ventured back. Dunkirk, only there were no boats coming to rescue them. Some had taken to the water in inflatable craft. There had been a couple of drownings. But nobody cared.

A tall sparse figure dressed in sombre grey moved slowly amongst the crowds. Deep-sunken eyes reflected an inner feeling of jubilation, arms held aloft, a monotone chanting, ‘Repent, the day of reckoning is at hand. The wrath of the Lord is nigh. Repent ye, before ye die. Repent and be saved.’

‘Aw, shaddup!’ A group of youths turned, and one spat on the sand. ‘Fuck off, you old scarecrow.’

‘Repent!’ The pointing finger singled out the one who had spoken. ‘Blaspheme not in this thy last hour.’

Four of the youths got to their feet, slowly, menacingly. A few hours ago they had been badly frightened. They had run screaming down the Marine Drive, jumping the sea wall to escape the low-flying locust swarm. Now they needed some means of restoring their pride and courage. One old man, a religious freak, he'd do. Duff'im over.

They advanced, fanning out into a circle that closed in on the man.

‘Hey, mister. Is your name Isaiah?’

‘No, my good friend, I am known as -’

‘As Isaiah.’

‘I assure you …’ A step backwards, fear beginning to show in his eyes.

‘It's gotta be. Can't be anythin' else, 'cos one eye's 'igher than the other!’

Loud guffaws greeted the bawdy humour. The preacher, arms raised so that the sleeves of his worn jacket fell back to reveal corded blue veins in the white skin, lifted his misshapen eyes up to the heavens.

‘A curse is upon the land. A plague that shall -’ He broke off, all else forgotten, even the youths, as he saw the growing speck in the sky, a cloud that hurtled down towards the packed beach with unbelievable speed.

A human stampede again, screaming crowds charging in every direction, many heading towards the tideline.

‘Repent ye, in the name of the Lord.’

The old man was sent sprawling, flattened in the sand as the seaward rush passed over him.

‘Locusts!’

The huge swarm flew low and fast, whipping bare flesh in passing but making no effort to settle. The sun was blotted out as the living storm thickened, thinned out, and then only the stragglers and the dead were left. People picked themselves up, staring out to sea after the vanishing cloud, watching it grow smaller and smaller until it was to be seen no more.

‘Hell's bells,’ someone muttered, ‘that lot weren't 'anging about.’

Another cloud, more wingbeats, this time heavier and slower. Seabirds, mostly gulls, in long V formations, streaming out from the cliffs, the sky filled with wild music. Wave after wave passed over, black-backed gulls, herring gulls, a few cormorants, all following the same course as though some Pied Piper from the far deep was calling them.

Half an hour of aerial activity and then the sky was empty. The old man in the crumpled grey suit was kneeling in the sand, arms upraised, chanting tonelessly.

‘The day of reckoning is at hand. The Lord has sent a curse upon us …’

But nobody was listening. Some were even making their way back towards the promenade. The locusts were gone, headed out to sea, the birds following them. Nobody understood what was going on, but they felt that it was a good sign.

The large church was packed to capacity, every pew filled, the queue in the main aisle reaching right back to the main doors which were locked on the inside. Hot and stifling, people fainting at frequent intervals, room being made for them to be stretched out on the black and white marble floor.

The finest stained-glass windows in the home counties, darkened and indiscernible, locusts covering the outer panes, moving hideously, a blasphemous background for the main crucifixion scene.

Day four of the siege of this holy place, the enemy relentless in their efforts to breach the defences, gnawing away exterior wood carvings, progressing slowly but surely. It was a matter of hours before they burst in.

The Reverend John Waterson leaned wearily against the pulpit. Sharp-featured with greying hair, he had almost reached the limit of his endurance. He knew that he could not go on much longer, and neither could anybody else.

The congregation were afraid, restless. Well, not the congregation, really. Two thirds of these people had not been inside a place of worship for years. Now, in their hour of need, they turned to religion. If by some miracle they were saved, then they would not return here; not until a nuclear war or some similar disaster occurred. It was the way.

Waterson scanned the rows of white faces. Babies cried in the arms of their mothers. Older children fidgeted. That man in the fifth pew from the rear, leaning stiffly back with closed eyes … he had died yesterday evening. Quietly, and without any fuss. Nobody noticed, except Waterson. There was no point in making the fact known. It would only add to the fear of death which haunted these already terrified people.

A routine, that was the only way to maintain any degree of sanity, the clergyman decided. Communion at eight (the wine had already run out and they were using water), Matins at eleven, Sunday school at two-thirty for the children, and Evensong at six. Final blessing at nine-thirty. It was hard work. He had used up most of the sermons which he had prepared for the month ahead, and now he was attempting to remember a few of those which he had preached during July. Not that anybody listened. Just keep talking. Play for time. Surely somebody would do something about the locusts before long. The Prime Minister had declared a state of emergency. Well, this was an emergency, so what were the armed forces playing at? And the fire brigade? Get some hoses on the outside of the church, douse the little b-, nuisances. Drown 'em.

A hammering on the stout oak doors.

‘Open up. Open up, for Christ's sake, let us in!’ Raised voices, screams, crowds outside in the street braving the stricken streets in an attempt to get into the church. For Christ's sake … no, it was for their own sakes. Waterson shook his head sadly. The key was in the pocket of his surplice. There was no room for any more inside this building.

Children were crying. They were hungry. Nobody could help them, neither in here nor outside. There was no food in the area, whole towns had been cleaned out, a combination of early panic-buying, the locusts, and the mobs which roamed the streets after dark, looting.

Famine! It was an ugly word. Regular churchgoers put a few coppers in the Overseas Aid box every now and then. To help feed the undernourished in foreign lands. But the petty donors didn't care, they didn't try to understand. Now they realized. But it was too late.

Waterson decided to abandon the sermon. He couldn't remember the gist of the theme, and his tired brain was incapable of working out a new angle. He sighed, and in a hushed whisper which was magnified by the acoustics, piously said, ‘Let us pray.’

His voice droned on, inaudible beyond the first two rows, the humming of the insects which enveloped the exterior of the church seeming to grow louder as though their numbers were continually increasing. ‘… that Thou mayest see Thy way, Lord, to spare these people gathered together in Thy sight …’

The hammering on the door had ceased. Those outside had fled from the locusts. Instead there was a steady gnawing sound as the hordes began their assault on seasoned oak.

Waterson knelt, head bowed, then upraised as though seeking inspiration from the glass crucifixion scene on the west windows, fingertips touching, lips pursed. Nobody was really listening, anyway.

And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land.

The church was growing darker by the second, incessant crazy chattering, crunching, buzzing. The clergyman gave up trying to pray, his repertoire exhausted, just his own mumbled private thoughts. His own sins. There were enough of them. Selfishness. The time when he had been in charge of a boys' boarding school, his own brand of discipline. Too hasty with the cane, chastising, inflicting suffering for minor misdemeanours. Pupils caned because they had not put their sports clothes back in their lockers after football. The classes he taught himself, Latin and Greek, making no allowances for those who were not quick to learn. Wooden blackboard dusters flung in a fit of temper, heads banged on desk tops, hair pulled. All amounting to chastisement. Because he enjoyed it. Sadistic.

He prayed again, lips moving soundlessly, eyes closed.

And then there was light …

Sudden blinding sunlight that flooded the aisle, the congregation blinking, dazzled. The figure on the cross scintillating, smiling down, fleeting moving shadows flickering across it. And the noise of the locusts was to be heard no more.

Waterson rose to his feet and moved unsteadily out on to the foot of the altar steps, a slight bow, facing the congregation, not knowing what to say. Silence, a wave of relief hitting him from the packed pews.

He walked unsteadily to the far end of the church, several hundred pairs of eyes following him, looking to him for leadership, mutely asking questions which he was unable to answer. Nobody knew. Perhaps they never would. The Lord had answered their prayers and He did not have to give reasons.

Waterson fumbled beneath his cassock, found the key, had difficulty in inserting it in the lock. The heavy door swung back a few inches, his foot behind it, just in case …

A deserted sunlit street. Almost. Except for the birds. Hundreds of them, milling on the pavements, mingling in the roadway, pecking voraciously at the dead insects which were scattered everywhere. Feral pigeons crooned their delight. Starlings twittered.

‘What is it?’ Waterson felt himself being pushed to one side, the doors being dragged wider, those who had given up hope a short time ago now peering outside, scarcely able to believe the scene which confronted them.

‘Birds’ he muttered. ‘Just look at them!’

Doors and windows were opened down the length of the street, residents looking out. The feathered mass continued to feed unconcernedly.

Men, women, and children spilled out of the church. They began to make their way back to their homes, treading carefully, stepping over pigeons and starlings, shaking their heads, some trying to answer their children's questions. But there were no answers. The locusts had gone. The starlings and pigeons, which for years had presented a problem for the council, were back in force.

The Reverend John Waterson went back inside his church, head bowed, and knelt on the altar steps. Only a few of those who had flocked here in their hour of need would return for the thanksgiving service which he planned. Already they were forgetting the long hours of prayer. Just one man remained in the hot silent church with the clergyman. The corpse in the fifth pew.

Wallace had lived and worked in lonely places all his life. His father and his grandfather had been gamekeepers on the wild Scottish moorlands, and there was no finer occupation to remove one from the realms of the conventional.

Angus Wallace was in his fifty-second year, and as his family were all long-lived he reasonably expected to continue in his chosen calling for another two or three decades.

He had come up on to the moors from his stone cottage in the village three miles away in the last week of July. It was less than three weeks until the Glorious Twelfth, and there was much work to do if he was to provide his employers with the sport they anticipated. Some of the butts needed renovation, the drives had to be planned down to the last detail, and he had to familiarize himself with the movements of the coveys.

It had not been an easy year, Muir-burning had had to be curtailed in the spring due to the dryness of the heather. The grouse and blackgame had not enjoyed a prolific breeding season. Water had been scarce. Some of the birds had gone on to other moors where wide deep burns provided them with a regular drinking place. But it was no good trying to tell the men from London this when they arrived in their Rolls Royces and Land Rovers modified with gun racks and dog compartments. They paid a lot of money for their sport and they were not prepared to accept second best.

Wallace spent the following days in the small bothy beneath the first line of hills, beyond which five thousand acres of rolling moorland stretched to the start of the big mountain range. He asked nothing more than this square stone building with its peat fire and camp bed. He had brought a few items of canned foodstuffs with him in his haversack and this would be supplemented by rabbits which he would snare along the drystone walls.

He had heard about the locusts down south. Twice he had listened in to the news on the old-fashioned wireless in his cottage, but now he did not even have that. He didn't need it. The problems of the world were not his. And, anyway, the swarms would not come this far north. In all probability the whole matter had been blown up out of all proportion by the media, and when he returned to the village towards the end of September everybody would have forgotten all about it.

He went about his duties in his usual unhurried manner. Everything would be completed by the time the gentry arrived. He busied himself for two or three days, a man dedicated to his profession, a perfectionist. Curlew called in the distance, that long lonely warbling cry that reminded Angus Wallace of the marshes and the mudflats. The birds came inland to breed in the spring, and with the arrival of September they would be returning to their coastal habitat. He marked the beginning of autumn by their departure, time for him to return to his own home in the distant village.

He was in the midst of rebuilding the second butt when a movement on the skyline attracted his attention. An approaching dot at first, becoming larger as it came nearer. A covey of grouse? He watched, straining his eyes. The formation didn't look right. Too ragged, too fast. Too big!

Suddenly he knew that they were insects. Millions of them, erratic in flight, dropping down on to a wide patch of heather that had withstood the long period of drought, covering it completely. He was uneasy. The swarm was larger than a flock of migrant starlings, and anyway it was too early for the birds to start arriving from the continent and Russia. They were definitely insects; the noise they made, a loud rasping hum that was rising to a crescendo, a sound like grazing sheep as they fed on the vegetation.

Then he saw a second lot coming from the south-west, high, dipping down as though they had already spotted the first arrivals and knew that there was food to be had there. A third and a fourth cloud, and more still coming.

Wallace had never seen a locust in his life, but he knew that that was what they were. They had to be. No other insects could possibly move and feed in such numbers, He began heading back in the direction of the bothy, walking fast, keeping low behind a long stone wall. From what they said on the wireless, these creatures attacked people. The sooner he was indoors, the better.

It was stifling inside the stone structure, the walls and roof absorbing the rays of the burning overhead sun and storing the heat. Nevertheless, he closed the door, and shut the single window! Maybe if he stayed in here for an hour or two they would move on. There was nothing here for them except heather, anyway.

Half an hour later he heard them hit the building with the force of a charge of buckshot. They pinged against the window, hanging on to the glass, supported by each other, staring in at him. He shrank away. Those horrible eyes, fixed on him with expressions of hate, the repulsive bodies heaving as they breathed. Watching and waiting.

A fall of soot down the chimney, spilling out into the grate, rising in a choking cloud. He coughed, and as the black dust began to settle he saw the locusts, squatting on the hearth, hundreds of them, regarding him steadily.

He stared in total disbelief. Grasshoppers. Nothing more than oversized grasshoppers! Surely they were harmless. All those rumours, exaggerated in the telling, whipped up by the media deliberately to cause mass panic. Well, they weren't dealing with the ordinary man in the street now. Angus Wallace knew his stuff. He knew more about the creatures of the wild than most naturalists and scientists.

Man and locusts regarded each other steadily. The gamekeeper stretched out a hand, his gnarled fingers closing around the end of a chunk of firewood. He picked it up, balanced it, picked his mark, and flung it with all the force he could muster. It flew straight and true, right into the midst of the huddled insects, crushing a bunch of them instantly into a heap of green and yellow sludge, ricocheting, cutting a path through those on the opposite edge of the hearth.

‘Take that, yeli'l de'ilsl’

The whole room erupted into a savage maelstrom of insectile anger and hate. Wallace staggered back under the impact of the attack, striking out, tearing at those which fastened on to his clothing and face. Clouds more were pouring from the fireplace, the chimney a clogged living mass, desperate to get at the one man who had dared to defy them.

Wallace struggled blindly, fighting his way into the corner, his hands groping until they located the double-barrelled shotgun which rested against the wall. It was loaded. It always was when he was up here alone, kept in readiness for the fox or carrion crow which might stray within range of the bothy.

He gripped the gun, somehow managed to cock the hammers, and swung it round. He didn't need to aim. Anywhere would do.

The double explosion tore at his eardrums, shook the room like an earthquake, the twin charges of lead shot cutting a path through the locusts. One brief moment of triumph, and then Wallace was being hurled back, slumping against the wall as the pellets ploughed into him, thrown back by the stone walls. Too late he realized what had happened, the folly of his action.

They were on him again in even greater numbers, raking, spitting and stinging, taking their revenge for the minor slaughter he had inflicted upon their innumerable ranks. The stench of powder cloyed his nostrils. He was blinded, blood oozing out of his face and body in a score of separate wounds. Locusts found themselves trapped in the blood, drowned by their colleagues pressing down upon them. They buzzed incessantly, biting, feeding, dying, being eaten, more joining the banquet.

And somehow Angus Wallace lived through it all. Day or night, he knew not, a black abyss that lived and crawled. His hands found the gun again. Had there been ammunition handy he would have ended it all, but the cartridges were in a box in the lean-to outside. There was no hope of getting to them. Eventually, the gun fell from his fingers.

After what seemed an eternity, a period of inactivity followed, the creatures still all over his body but no longer biting. Even their vile music grated to a terrible silence. Occasionally a movement, a slight shifting of position by one or two that rippled through the rest of them, a crowded football terrace, the restlessness of one or two spectators forcing the crowd to jostle into the others.

Wallace knew that his shotgun wounds were not serious. Pellets lodged beneath his skin, and he had bled quite a lot, but after a time the blood had congealed. He was blinded, certainly. These devils had inflicted innumerable bites, his clothes were gone, devoured. Had he had sufficient strength he might have made it to the door. But he had not. He could do nothing more than lie there and attempt to breathe, sucking in air and locusts.

Eventually, everything blacked out, and he was spared the pain and horror for a time. It might have been for an hour or a month. Time was meaningless. Then he was being shaken, crying out as everything came back to him, the room, the blood, the agony. All over again.

‘What's the matter, mon? Ha' the locusts found ye? Ye've bin shot?’

He must be dreaming. Human hands, a voice. One he recognized, too. McDonald, the flockmaster. But he had come too late. The gamekeeper knew that he was going to die. Perhaps not today. Tomorrow, or the day after that. There was nothing anybody could do for him.

‘They've gone,’ McDonald grunted, ‘all gone. A terrible swarm. There's nothin' much left o' the moor. Gone on north, I reckon. Now the corvines are here, every one between here and Inverness, I'd say. Hoodies, carrions, the lot. The hills are ae black wi' 'em. But that's none o' your worry now. Just you rest awhile while I go to Auchnagall and get the factor to come for ye in his Land Rover.’

McDonald went back outside, breathing in the fresh air with relish, trying to get the stench of death and locusts out of his lungs. All round him the crows fed, strangely unafraid of man, feeding voraciously on the dead insects. The crofter shook his head. It was beyond his ken. Something had brought the locusts here, and something had frightened them away. But it would be a long time before the countryside recovered.

He walked off slowly in the direction of Auchnagall. There was no hurry. Angus Wallace was going to die, anyway. Nothing could change that.

The Prime Minister smiled at the cameras with confidence. The crisis wasn't over yet, but at least the locusts had left the cities and towns. Reports were conflicting. A lot of outlying places were still under siege, but the death toll was steadying. There was reason to be hopeful. The government would claim the credit for the way the raiders had been driven back. Of course, the birds had helped, played some part in it, but there was an election looming on the horizon. That fact could not be overlooked.

‘The tide is turning,’ he said slowly, adjusting his tie, ‘and the declaration of a state of emergency seems to have been timed to perfection. Spraying has been carried out intensively, and the results are most gratifying. Most suburban areas are now cleared of locusts and in a few days it should be possible to return to some vestige of normality. But not just yet’ -play it carefully – ‘because this war must be won outright. The pest must be driven from our country, and we cannot risk small bands remaining to breed and multiply.

‘Vital supplies are still being hampered whilst roads, railways, and airports are cleared and made fully operative once more. Food is at present being flown into disaster areas by helicopters’ - every area is a disaster area, but try and imply that elsewhere is worse – ‘and we are taking steps to ensure that everybody … everybody … will be catered for. We can congratulate ourselves on handling an unprecedented situation quickly and efficiently, and we must take steps to see that it never happens again. The source of the locusts is still a mystery although it is believed that migratory swarms were swept off course by freak air currents. This is the most likely of a number of theories.’

‘I must remind you that a state of emergency still exists. Be patient. We are achieving results, and those of you in outlying areas, still in the midst of an infestation, can draw comfort from the knowledge that we have got the locusts on the run.

‘The environment will take time to recover, but it seems that birdlife has suffered little, and at the moment many species seem to be thriving well on the dead locusts which remain after the swarms have been decimated and driven off.’

‘Once again, I beseech you to be patient. Remain in your homes. I hope that when I next speak to you I shall be able to declare that a state of emergency no longer exists. Good night.’

The Prime Minister hurried from the studios to his waiting chauffeur-driven car. Newspaper reporters thronged the pavement, some of them having to be pushed back by a uniformed policeman.

‘Prime Minister, may we ask your reaction to the gas tanker explosion in Shropshire? What steps are being taken to control the transportation of dangerous chemicals on our roads?’

‘What is the real position regarding imported vital supplies?’

‘Would it not have been better to have called a state of emergency at the outset, before the locust situation got out of control?’

He ignored them, climbed into the back of the car, and slammed the door. The driver was already easing the Daimler away from the kerb. Faces. Questions. Scores of them. He glanced down, went through the motions of opening his brief case and getting some papers out.

Always questions. A televised or broadcast speech was fine. You could get your points over, unhindered, with no immediate backlash. Spontaneous answers were an art he had learned to master early in his political career. Skate round the issue at stake. Try and justify it. If you couldn't do that, find a scapegoat. That was where the opposition came in very handy. He believed it was they who had brought in a ban on certain harmful insecticides, during their term of office. He would check with the Agriculture Minister first thing in the morning. Now, I say to you, that had we had these sprays at our disposal and been in a position to use them efficiently when the crisis first began … Something like that, anyway. Never hint that you might just have made one almighty balls-up.

Chapter 18

It was some time before Sheila was able to stand up again, even with Alan's help. Her ankle had swollen to almost twice its normal size and now even the slightest contact with the ground brought her excruciating pain.

‘Well, we've no option other than to head for home.’ Alan gripped her around the waist and took her full weight on his own body. ‘We'll have to do it in slow easy stages, resting every fifty yards or so.’

‘But what about David?’

‘I expect he's home by now, and in any case we can't make it right round the hill.’

‘You go on and leave me. I'll …’

‘You'd crawl about twenty yards and then pass out. Now, lean on me, hop along with your good leg, and tell me if you feel faint.’

She realized that there was nothing else they could do. Another hour and it would start to get light, and if they were caught out in the open …

They covered about five hundred yards and then she heard a sound some distance behind them, stealthy footsteps, someone walking in the same direction, catching them up.

‘Listen,’ she whispered.

‘What? I can't -’

‘There's somebody coming this way.’

They stopped. Sheila's pulses raced.

‘Who's there?’ Alan called out.

No answer. Pebbles being kicked, a shape materializing out of the darkness, hurrying, breathing heavily, sobbing.

‘David!’ Sheila breathed. ‘Oh, thank God. It's David!’

‘Where the hell d'you think you've been?’ Alan demanded angrily as the boy caught up with them. ‘We've been out looking for you half the night. Your mother's twisted her ankle and can't walk.’

‘I'm sorry, Dad.’ David was crying, relieved, no hint of the tantrum which he had had earlier. ‘I didn't mean to be away so long, but … but I was looking for Bunty and then I got lost. I never thought I'd find the way back.’

‘We'll talk about that later,’ Alan snapped. ‘Now, walk on the other side of your mother and let her use your shoulder for support.’

Their progress was slow. Once Sheila felt herself fainting and they had to lower her to the ground and rest again, longer this time. Then as they started off once more Alan glanced up into the eastern sky. The stars were beginning to pale, and there was a faint streak of silvery light just above the horizon.

‘We're not going to make it,’ he muttered. ‘No way.’

‘What … oh, what on earth can we do?’ Sheila felt herself on the verge of panic. ‘The woods are full of locusts.’

‘There's just once chance.’ An idea occurred to Alan, a long shot but when you're desperate any gamble seems worthwhile. ‘Just up here on the right, about ten yards off the road, there's a natural pool, fed by a spring that comes up through the rocks. Half of it is choked by reeds. Maybe if we could make it there, we could … well, play Moses in the bulrushes.’

‘Would it be safe?’

‘Nowhere's safe. Not even our own house. The chances are that the locusts will break in there today, anyway, so I guess we haven't a lot to lose. It'll be muddy and uncomfortable, but if you can think of a better idea …’

They reached the pool a few minutes later. All around the forest was coming to life, a faint hum growing by the second, being taken up from plantation to plantation until the air vibrated.

‘Hell, there's millions more locusts here than there have been ever since the trouble started,’ Alan whispered. ‘It's weird. As though they're gathering in the hills for some reason.’

He looked at the pool in the dim light. There was still a considerable depth of water in it. The surrounding rushes were thick and tall. Obviously, like the pine leaves, they did not figure on the locusts' menu.

‘Everybody in.’ The water gurgled softly as he stepped forward, still supporting Sheila, and sank above his ankles. She stiffened and her hold on him tightened. A putrid smell rose up as the mud was disturbed, a foul stench that had their empty stomachs heaving.

‘How awful,’ she muttered. ‘David, are you all right?’

‘I'm OK, Mum.’ It was back to ‘Mum’ now that he had recovered from his fright.

‘Lean on me, both of you,’ Alan said, ‘but we're all going to get pretty uncomfortable before the day's out. If the locusts come we'll have to get right down in the water. It's deeper in the middle. Submerge ourselves, just popping our heads up for air every few seconds. In the meantime, all we can do is wait.’

Wait. Sheila grimaced and tried to shut out the pain in her ankle. Her weight was on her left foot, leaning against Alan. She wondered how long it would be before she started to get cramp. It didn't bear thinking about.

It was getting light fast now, the stars overhead fading as the light from the east spread, turning the sky into a mantle of pale blue. There wasn't a single cloud to be seen. The day was going to be another scorcher, as hot, if not hotter, than anything they had experienced so far.

Sheila's ankle began to go numb. The water was having a soothing effect on it, like an ice pack. She shifted her position a fraction of an inch and heard the mud gurgle, sinking in another inch or so.

‘Couldn't … couldn't we hide in the trees and make a dash for the water if the locusts come?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps later.’ Alan kept his voice low, fearing lest their position was given away to the enemy. ‘But not just yet. These trees are crammed with locusts. Possibly they'll fly off in search of food in a bit, and then we might give it a try. In the meantime, I'm afraid we've got to stay put.’

The thickets surrounding the stagnant pond were coming to life. Every tree branch was a seething moving mass, a blaze of green and yellow that purred and buzzed. Locusts were dropping to the ground all the time, dislodged from their overcrowded perches, squatting on the bare earth.

They know we're here, Sheila thought. They're watching us. Waiting for us to make the first move as they did when they had us trapped in the house. We can't stay here for ever. And they know it.

Yet the locusts seemed unaware of the humans crouched amidst the rushes. The insects were flying from one branch to another, a pre-breakfast gathering, other swarms from further afield flying over, heading westwards. Always westwards.

Alan wondered what was happening to Pat Emmerton. She would be terrified, all alone in the house, worrying about them, trying to figure out what to do. He prayed that she wouldn't do anything stupid like trying to come and look for them. Provided she kept all the doors and windows shut there was little likelihood of the hordes getting indoors … yet. They'd make it sooner or later, of course. Once they'd penetrated the attic it wouldn't be long before they ate their way down into the house. Nothing could stop them. The only hope was that they would decide that there was more worthwhile feeding elsewhere.

The three of them would have to remain out there in the woods until darkness had fallen. Only then would it be safe to attempt to get back. A blistering day in which there was no food available, and the stagnant water in which they knelt was unfit to drink. Eighteen hours of hell.

David clung to his father's arm, kneeling upright, the muddy water up to his waist. He was determined not to complain. It was his fault that they were in this mess. He deserved a thrashing. That would have been far preferable to this. There had been no sign of Bunty. He had known in his heart that he wouldn't find the rabbit. He wanted to say he was sorry but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It wouldn't sound right, anyway. His parents knew how he felt, he didn't have to embarrass them as well as himself.

More locusts were on the wing, spiralling up out of the trees, gaining height, and streaking off. Always westward. As though they were being pursued.

‘They sell locusts as pets, don't they?’ Sheila asked after a while.

‘Yes,’ Alan said, ‘like stick insects.’

‘Do you think that some might have escaped and started to breed?’

‘It's possible, but I don't think they'd be able to produce the numbers in the time. Like the peaches …’ He checked himself, but it was too late.

‘What peaches?’

‘Those that Uncle Fred gave us before we moved here.’

‘You don't think -’

‘I know. Locusts had laid in the fruit. Some had hatched out in the crate in the granary. I found 'em when it was too late.’

‘Oh, my God I But you never said.’

‘There wasn't any point. It was too late by then. No point in having everybody think that we had brought about this plague. Anyway, our few peaches wouldn't make any difference, not in the long run. The shipload might. The eggs would be distributed to all parts of the country before they hatched. The experts say it can't happen. I could prove 'em wrong, but I don't intend to. It's a coincidence. A few hatched out, but the big lots arrived here by accident during migration. Anything's liable to happen when Nature and the weather go crazy. And it's happened, all right.’

Time passed. The sun rose steadily, and the temperature soared. Even in the shade of the trees, kneeling in water, it was uncomfortably hot.

‘Look out! Get down!’ Alan hissed, pulling the other two right down into the bottom of the reed bed.

A swishing, clicking sound, the shade deepening, and then almost darkness for a few moments. Rumblings that died gradually into the distance.

‘Christ, see the size of that swarm!’ Alan pulled them up on to their knees again. ‘Going like crazy bats. I just wish these in the trees around us would take off and then we could have a rest on dry land.’

The buzzing was loud. But there was no crunching sound. At least the insects had not decided to feed on the pine leaves. Alan sighed. They'd just have to stick it out. The devils would surely go out to feed in the fields before long.

A droning sound, loud and steady, louder than the locusts and with mechanical regularity,

‘Helicopters,’ Alan muttered, ‘Doubtless armed with gallons of insecticide.’ He listened, trying to work out their direction. ‘Going south. Just our luck. Bloody typical. Don't bother spraying the hills. You won't find much up there. No arable, just grazing. The locusts won't bother much with dried up grass. Not really worthwhile flying over for a peek. Keep to low ground. They're going to bypass us.’

‘Don't you think we ought to try and make a break for it in the pickup?’ Sheila groaned. ‘I know everybody's in the same boat, but at least we might be able to let the authorities know that there's a dense infestation in the hills. It would be better than sitting in the house just waiting for the locusts to get through to us.’

‘We might give it a try,’ he said, ‘but with half the roads blocked we run the risk of getting stuck somewhere worse than we already are. And we couldn't hold out for days in the pickup.’

Locusts were leaving. Not a mass exodus, but small groups taking off, flying back over the trees, and then heading in the same direction that all the others had taken. More and more were flying away as though some signal had been given to vacate the area and go in search of food.

For the next hour the creatures were departing in a stream of small groups, leaving gaps on the boughs of the firs. A steady process that took until well after midday, finally only a few were left, those which had completed their lifespan and would die within a short time, not having the strength left to take to the wing. The ground beneath the plantation was covered with the dead, those which had died during the night.

‘Well, I think we can risk a rest on dry land,’ Alan stood up, but his legs were numb from the thighs downwards. He tried to take a step, buckled at the knees and fell backwards, pulling Sheila and David with him. They landed with a splash, struggling to keep their heads above the muddy water.

‘Christ!’ He spat out a mouthful of water. ‘My legs. They're dead.’

‘Mine, too,’ Sheila winced, ‘I can just feel pins and needles starting.’

The three of them writhed together as their circulation began to flow again, David was crying, biting his lip until blood showed. Sheila's nails dug deep into the palms of her hands. Agony, followed by a sensation of jellified weakness from the waist downwards. It was a quarter of an hour before they were able to drag themselves on to the patch of bare ground which bordered the plantation, lying there, gasping, sweating.

‘I'm hungry,’ David whimpered.

‘And the same goes for all of us.’ Alan slipped an arm around his son. ‘But it's something we'll just have to put up with. Let's get back into the trees and rest for a while.’

They had to break off some of the lower branches and use them as brushes to sweep a patch amongst the carpet of dead insects. Then they lay back, David in between Alan and Sheila. And waited.

The sun was past its zenith. The locust noise was intermittent now, the odd ones that had been left behind. There was nothing to be feared from them. Just grasshoppers.

Almost silence. Then another sound, harsher, louder.

Cronk-cronk-cronk.

‘What's that?’ Sheila sat up.

‘A raven,’ Alan muttered. ‘Haven't heard one for weeks now. Not since the locusts arrived in numbers.’

The deep throated corvine call was louder, nearer. They heard the swish of wings and then they saw it, the huge black bird gliding in over the treetops, coming down, alighting on the water's edge. It drank, dipping its beak into the murky shallows, and then it turned away, walking about amongst the carpet of insect corpses, pecking, stabbing, swallowing.

Alan raised a finger for silence. There was no point in alarming the raven. In a way it was like an unexpected visit from a long-absent friend, an ally against the common enemy.

Cronk-cronk. Caw-caw-caaaw.

More wingbeats, birds appearing out of the empty sky, landing by the pool, drinking first, and feeding afterwards. A mopping-up operation. More and more were arriving, other species. Jays shrieked from the thickets before flitting silently in to join the black horde, magpies chattered like rapid machine gun fire. Then came the terns, long V formations that landed on the algae covered surface of the pond with scarcely a ripple, swam around, their white plumage in stark contrast to the deep greenery of the background and the dark sheen of the crows and ravens.

Feeding heavily, clearing up the dead locusts with almost unbelievable rapidity. And still more birds were showing up, starlings and songbirds perching on the branches. Some were leaving, flapping up. Heading westwards.

‘Incredible!’ Alan breathed. ‘The whole countryside has been devoid of birdlife and suddenly, within a matter of an hour or so, they've returned. In fantastic numbers. Just listen. The woods are full of them. Corvines mostly.’

‘But why?’ Sheila asked.

‘The locusts scared 'em away in the first place, drove 'em right across the breadth of the country. They fled because they'd never seen swarms of locusts before and it scared 'em to hell. But then they cottoned on to the fact that these insects are the best eating they've ever known, and nothing to be frightened of. Hatherton's poultry were the same. After the swarm had gone they began gorging themselves on the corpses. The birds know what locusts are now. They won't be scared next time. They'll just get stuck in, breakfast, lunch and tea, and supper, too, if they've room in their crops. My God, it's the best thing that's ever happened to us and to the whole country!’

‘Yes, but eating a few dead locusts isn't going to help much.’

‘That's only a small part of it. The whole bird population of Great Britain, with the exception of birds of prey, buzzards and hawks, are on the rampage. This is why the locusts suddenly came back up into the hills. The birds drove
'em here, forced 'em to retreat anywhere they could! It's taken time because they aren't so much concerned with hounding down the swarms as eating all they can get, and there's loads of dead 'uns to keep 'em happy. But sooner or later they had to catch up with the big lots. And the myriads are scared to hell!’

‘Then … then possibly the locusts have deserted the house, left us in peace?’

‘There's a chance.’ Alan did not want to raise false hopes. He had to be sure. ‘Look, we'll stop here another hour or so, and then, if there's no sign of the locusts coming back to the woods, we'll start to make our way slowly homewards.’

They lay there watching the crows, ravens, jays, magpies, terns, starlings, thrushes, blackbirds and a host of other species feeding all around. Maybe the birds were aware that man was in close proximity. Maybe not. They showed no sign of fear.

Alan rose to his feet, pulling Sheila and David up with him.

‘Well, let's make a start. How's your ankle?’

‘Sore and aching.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘But not nearly as painful as it was. I can make it. With your help.’

It was a slow walk, resting every so often, David bringing up the rear, his eyes darting to the right and left all the time. Bunty might just be up here.

It took them over an hour to reach the Fiddler's Elbow. Rooks clustered in the trees, lifting, settling, feeding, walking to one side to let them pass. The only locusts to be seen were dead ones, and those were disappearing fast down hungry beaks, mostly swallowed whole.

On to the hard road, another half-mile, and ‘The Granary’ came into view. They scarcely recognized it. Flocks of rooks were settled over the roof, a black moving cloak. More fed in the gateway and drive.

‘Look’ - there was a note of alarm in Sheila's voice – ‘the front door's open. There are birds in the house!’

Alan stared, a feeling of uneasiness creeping over him. It was right enough. But where was Pat Emmerton? Possibly she had gone back to the stables after the locusts had fled. Suddenly, he stiffened. Amidst the hundreds of corvines milling in front of the house there were some larger birds, brownish feathers, majestic in every movement, using their talons to scrape and tear at something. Buzzards. And buzzards were carnivorous!

‘Stop here.’ He pulled the others back. ‘Stay right here while I take a look.’

‘Why?’ Sheila was puzzled. ‘There aren't any locusts left. Not live ones, anyway.’

He didn't answer. He broke into a run, rushing through the birds, some of them flying up, insulting him angrily in a harsh vocal chorus, going down again when he was past. The buzzards lifted, lazily, unwillingly, huge wings beating the air, flapping away and settling on the trunk of a branchless tree in the adjoining field.

Alan felt the bile rising in his throat. The shape on the ground was barely recognizable. It was, or had been, a human being. The face was gone, the flesh eaten down to the bone, strips trailing away where the buzzards' talons had torn at it but not severed it completely. The neck was an open gash, a bloody hole that went deep. No breasts. Abdomen, a series of excavations like a rabbit warren, innards spilling in every direction. Legs skeletal, spread lewdly as though demanding copulation even in death.

Only the hair remained, crimson, matted strawberry-blonde. That alone told him that he was looking upon the remnants of Pat Emmerton.

He retched, bent double, straining to vomit on an empty stomach, his vision blurred, turning his head away so that he should see no more. Somehow he managed to stagger back to where Sheila and David were standing, pulling them away. They knew. At least it saved him having to tell them.

‘The back door,’ he grunted, ‘we'll go in the back way.’

Crows fluttered and perched on the broken furniture in the kitchen. A window was broken providing easy access for several rooks, some of which tried to escape the same way, failed to find the jagged hole, and flew into the lounge.

Every room was wrecked. Bird droppings on the walls and floor, upholstery on the chairs and sofa ruined. Sheila backed away, flinging an arm up to protect herself as an irate rook flew at her, swerved, and made it through the doorway into the kitchen.

‘Oh, God!’ She leaned wearily against the wall, her eyes dosed. ‘Just let's take the pickup and go. Now!’

‘All right,’ Alan nodded. ‘I guess we may as well try and make it somewhere else. This place won't be habitable for weeks.’

He escorted them to where the pickup truck stood silently in the yard, helped them into the cab, and then turned away.

‘I won't be a minute,’ he muttered. ‘There's something I've got to do first, before we go.’

He went back indoors, up the narrow staircase to where the linen cupboard stood. The door was still closed. Nothing had broken in here, neither locusts nor birds. He rummaged amongst the folded sheets and pillowcases. A couple of blankets, ex-army, dull grey. They would do.

Back downstairs, he went out through the front door into the bright sunlight, angrily flapping the blankets at the birds which impeded his progress. Rooks squawked and waddled out of his way. The buzzards took off again. They hadn't wasted any time in returning to their feast.

Alan paused, eyes closed, not wishing to look down on the ravaged corpse. God, what a way to end up! They'd got her in the end. The dirty little creepy bastards! Killed her, and left her for the buzzards.

He laid the blankets across the gory remains of Pat Emmerton, thankful that they covered her. He hunted around, found a couple of big stones, and weighted the grey shroud with them. It was the best he could do in the circumstances. At least, he'd tried.

He stood back, head bowed, seeing her as she once was, vivacious, seductive, compelling.

‘Thanks for everything, Pat,’ he muttered, struggling to keep back the tears. ‘I guess we all owe you a lot.’

He turned quickly away, moving the birds again, going around the house rather than through it. A movement attracted his attention, a slow hopping rather than the impatient bobbing of birdlife. He stared. A rabbit, light grey fur, white around the feet, big round eyes that widened.

‘Here, fella,’ he called huskily.

The rabbit moved towards him, a number of detours to bypass crows and rooks, lolloping. Alan reached down, lifted it up, and cradled it to his chest.

‘You've caused us an awful lot o' trouble, fella’ - he stroked it gently – ‘but I guess there's one young man who's going to be mighty pleased to see you.’

‘Bunty!’ David shrieked, spilling out of the cab and running to meet his father. ‘Bunty! You found him.’

‘Hold on to him.’ Alan passed the rabbit over, and climbed in behind the steering wheel. ‘We don't want to have to go searching for him again.’

The engine stuttered into life. He let it run for a few moments.

‘Well.’ He turned to Sheila. ‘Where are we heading for, your mother's?’

‘No.’ She shook her head and smiled faintly. ‘Just somewhere where we can hole up for a while. Anywhere will do. A hotel or farm accommodation, just while things get back to normal.’

‘And then?’

‘I guess here's as good a place as any. ‘The Granary’ could be a superb place with a few alterations, a bit of work put in on it.’

His jaw dropped in surprise.

‘Well, the locusts have gone, haven't they? It'll be a different place without them crowding together and giving you a full concert all day long.’

He put the pickup into gear and moved out into the lane. In a roundabout sort of way, he had a lot to thank the locusts for. It was the old saying again, about an ill wind …

This time the Prime Minister did not have to force his smile. This was how past leaders had felt when they announced an end to hostilities after a long period of warfare. Providing your country had won, of course. You were the hero of the hour, simply because you stood there and told them it was all over.

‘I am delighted to be able to inform you’ - don't rush it, take your time – ‘that there is not a single locust swarm left in the British Isles. We have won the day. Since I last spoke to you, our offensive with aerial and ground spraying has decimated their ranks. We drove them from our shores, from the land into the sea, sent them whence they came. Our regular and volunteer forces have reacted superbly, and it is due solely to their efforts and to the actions of this government …’

No point in trying to blame the opposition now. No need to. Hammer it home to the public that this government have won the day,

‘And, therefore, I am pleased to announce, that, as from midnight tonight, the state of emergency which has been in force for the last fortnight is terminated. Life must return to normal. Supplies are already leaving our docks by road, unhampered, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer informs me that the International Monetary Fund have agreed …’

Repayable within five years. Win this election first. Increase taxes afterwards.

‘The damage inflicted upon our country by this plague of locusts is but a temporary setback. We shall rise from the ashes and become once again England's green and pleasant land, a world force, going from strength to strength.’

The custodian of the Tower of London was a relieved man. The ravens were back after being absent for almost a whole week. Well, three of them, anyway, looking glossy and well fed. The others would follow, he was certain. There was no need to make an official report concerning their absence for nobody had noticed.

England had almost fallen to a foreign foe. But not quite.

The End

Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
I hope you enjoyed the read!.
Guy.

This ebook is the twelfth 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.

The next book will be :

13. The Origin of the Crabs.

"Rouse suddenly let out a piercing scream releasing him from the paralysis of sheet terror in which those malevolent red eyes had held him. In panic he turned and tried to scramble up the slippery rockface. But his feet could not grip; slowly he began sliding back down, ever closer to the nightmarish form that was rapidly approaching, its huge claws waving in the air, its powerful jaws opening and closing in antipation ..."

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.