Abomination
Author: Guy N. Smith
Date: 1986-08-15 18:48:35+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Franklin Roeder, head of Roeder Agrochemicals Ltd., has developed a killer pesticide spray by applying the principle of weedkiller (that the weeds outgrow themselves and die) to insects. The first part is a huge success; everything from frogs to wood lice become bloated under its effects; but the second part is much more of a problem; most of the creatures stubbornly refuse to die. Roeder persuades his lab scientists to lie in their reports, so as to get an early release date for his pesticide. Meanwhile the effects of the spray are causing a plague of oversized and hungry insects.
Publisher: Arrow

Abomination - Kindle Version 1.0

(c) Guy N Smith 1986 - 2011

Published by Black Hill Books, December 2011

ISBN : 978-1-907846-373

First Published by Arrow November 1986.

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Contents

Title

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

The author has been opposed to the use of chemicals on the land for many years, and there is an increasing public awareness of their danger to the environment. This book is a work of fiction; let us hope that it never becomes fact.

G.N.S.

But all other flying creeping things shall be an abomination unto you.

Leviticus, c.ll, v.23

PROLOGUE

The pungent stench drifted into the village on the soft spring breeze. A faint, barely noticeable odour to begin with, gradually building up until it had you wrinkling your nose in a sudden awareness, closing any open windows, coughing. Trying to hold your breath.

The atmosphere became damp as though from one of the hill fogs that enveloped these border mountains from time to time; thick vapour moistened drying washing on the clothes lines and filmed the windows with a depressing opaqueness. You cleared your throat in an attempt to ease the aggravating soreness in your tonsils, and tasted a sharp disinfectant-like cloying on your palate.

You knew what it was and whence it came, and tried to dismiss it from your thoughts. But deep down in your subconscious you were afraid.

Obediah was the first in Pen-y-Cwm to notice it. For seventy-two of his eighty years he had breathed the pure mountain air, but these last few years his lungs had rebelled at the persistent contamination of the environment. The phlegm he spat in between puffs at his stubby blackened briar pipe was turning a deeper shade of yellow, sometimes tinged with black or green. It was not the strong twist tobacco that was responsible; his father and his grandfather before him had smoked and chewed Bogey Roll, and they had both lived into their nineties. No, it was something far more insidious that was doing this to him, something beyond his simple ken. He only knew that, whatever it was, it came from that research centre place up beyond the Dingle Farm, past the Wisemans' market garden. Something they sprayed on to the soil which drifted into the air. And slowly and surely it was poisoning the people of Pen-y-Cwm, there was no doubt about that.

He hunched forward on the green's only bench, pulled his navy blue overcoat tighter around his thin frame and tipped his tattered cap forward as though to shield himself from this invisible vaporous cloud. His features were gaunt and pallid in silhouette, and the mass of blackheads that merged with the dark stubble of his beard gave him a mottled appearance. His eyes glowed brightly like fireflies at dusk, burning with resentment. And fear.

Not fear for himself; he could not have all that much longer left. Three or four years at the outside, but the rattling of mucus in his lungs had him thinking it could be less. Not that he minded going - he had outlived his three score years and ten - but he had sensed his end hastening ever since they had begun playing about with all those sprays up at the research place.

His hands shook as he began slicing at the plug of twist with his pocketknife, then rolled and kneaded the black tobacco into shreds between his palms before stuffing it into the bowl of his pipe. A match scraped and flared, lighting up his skeletal features during the time it took him to get the smoke pulling to his satisfaction. And then he lapsed back into the obscurity of deep twilight with his nagging thoughts.

No, it wasn't for himself that he was afraid, but for the younger generation. Not just in Pen-y-Cwm, but for those in the world beyond, where he had never ventured except for those nightmarish three years in the trenches in France. The Boche had done their best to gas you but, Obediah considered, dirty as it was, it had been war. This wasn't. A kind of unprovoked attack that had you wondering if it was some devilish means of reducing the population, cutting the dole queues. A kind of latter-day gas chamber but you did not suspect a thing so you didn't resist. Except the likes of that newcomer, the outsider who had bought the Dingle nigh on five years ago. He wasn't taking it lying down.

Tom O'Dyer, known throughout three generations as Obediah, hadn't much time for outsiders. Years ago you never saw a strange face in Pen-y-Cwm, Obediah reflected, but the advent of motorized travel had changed all that. The old 'uns, except himself, had died off, and folks had come from afar with new ideas. Les Earnshaw was one of them, except that the young feller did talk a bit of sense and wasn't afraid to stand up to these bully boys who were spraying everybody and everything in the countryside as though they had every right to do so. Earnshaw was putting up his own fight in his own way and good luck to the boy. Organic farming, he called it. Obediah wasn't sure what that meant, but it seemed to be growing crops like everybody used to do in the old days without making a song and dance about it. Good old-fashioned muck and be damned to your chemical fertilizers. The others laughed at him, chaps like Joe Wiseman, who grew, according to himself, the best early carrots in the borderlands, took 'em thirty miles to market three times a week and still made a profit. Roeder, the bloke who owned the research laboratory, sneered too but in a more vicious way. A war of words; you could read them in the Tribune most weeks on the Letters to the Editor page.

Earnshaw had a way of expressing himself that Obediah had never mastered back in the days when old Joyner was headmaster at the small Pen-y-Cwm school. It was as much as the old man could do nowadays to make out the small print, but even to him the young smallholder's words packed a punch. He told 'em, all right, Obediah thought, told the bloody truth and be damned whether they liked it or not. These buggers were destroying the soil and all the vitamins and trace elements in it. That was why your sheep and cattle got sick and you had to pump 'em full of other chemicals just to keep 'em alive, and the chemicals got into the meat you ate and started affecting you too. Be buggered, there were cancer-causing sprays banned in America that they allowed the farmers to use in Britain! And, as Earnshaw pointed out, there was just one reason behind it all - money! The chemical boys were raking it in, and in order to keep on doing that they had to indoctrinate the farmers, convince 'em that they couldn't grow crops without chemicals. And, according to a letter Roeder wrote back in the Tribune, all chemical sprays and fertilizers were safe; they had to be or else the government would not allow farmers to use them. Of course, there were harmful chemicals, but these were kept to an ‘acceptable level’.

Poppycock, Earnshaw had replied the following week. Acceptable levels build up into unacceptable levels, which was why mothers with babies under six months old were having to be issued with bottled water in certain parts of the country. The nitrates in the soil, through excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers, had seeped into the water basins and could kill young babies.

Then Johnson from the local branch of the farmers' union had leaped into the fray - to keep the farmers indoctrinated and stop them thinking for themselves like this upstart outsider of a townie Earnshaw was trying to do, Obediah thought. Johnson had pointed out heatedly that without chemical fertilizers and insecticides the nation would starve. All this nonsense was ‘emotive farmer-bashing’.

Earnshaw had written back that the farmers were being bashed into submission by the agrochemicals people, numbed into thinking their way, and that the farmers' union had a responsibility not just towards its members but towards the public. He said that there was only one reason for chemicals being widely used on the land - money.

That was when the Tribune editor had diplomatically brought the week-in, week-out correspondence to a close. For the time being, Les Earnshaw had had the last word. But it was anybody's guess who was going to have the last laugh.

A spasm of coughing shook Obediah and bent him double on the old memorial seat. It had him thinking that in the end nobody would be laughing. Twenty years ago he had been a farm labourer on the Bostock Estate, before it had been split up and sold off, and he knew that the ‘outsider chap’ was right. These scientist beggars were prepared to poison everything and everybody just to feather their own nests. But there was damn all he could do about it at his time of life, so he would just have to keel over and die along with the rest of the population.

It was fully dark now. Obediah stood up, then had to hold on to the bench for support whilst a wave of dizziness came and went. He drew hard on his pipe, taking the strong tobacco smoke down into his lungs. It started off the coughing again. He spat, but it was too dark to see the colour of the blob of phlegm that hit the concrete surround of the seat with a dull splat.

They said tobacco killed you, printed government health warnings all over the place. But, he smiled grimly through the clenched teeth that bit hard on the nylon pipe stem, that was just to divert you from thinking that it might be these infernal poisonous sprays that were killing you. Find a scapegoat, blame smoking.

He shuffled back along the pavement. He did not have to see to find his way on to Pen-y-Cwm's main street.

And, there was no doubt about it, that smell in the atmosphere was stronger now, lingering because the breeze had dropped. He shivered. Damn it, you could feel its touch on your face like damp dead fingers stroking you, starting to eat into your flesh.

Les Earnshaw had let the goats graze an hour longer than usual this evening. After the long damp winter when they had been confined to the sheds for weeks, the new growth of grass was what they needed. It would increase the milk yield and also prepare the two pregnant nannies for kidding. This week had been God-sent, he thought, to help him forget the dreary months since last November. He felt good just being alive.

Until he smelled that infernal spray drifting over from beyond the forestry plantation that separated Roeder Agrochemicals Limited from the Wisemans' market garden. He stiffened, caught his breath and held it, and fought against an impetuous instinct to run back into the stone-built cottage and slam all the windows shut. He knew there was no hiding place, no escape. Where there was air, you had to breathe in whatever was contaminating it.

He tensed, went rigid with anger, raised and shook a clenched fist in a westerly direction, then relaxed with the realization of the futility of rage. He had passed through the emotional stages of the war he had been waging these last five years since he and Diane and their daughter Emma had come to Pen-y-Cwm. He realized he had to fight the enemy with cold, calculated logic. The most effective weapon was in making the public aware, rousing them out of their state of apathy. Let them get angry. Les was fast learning to adopt the role of a general organizing his troops in battle.

He thought about going and fetching a mask, one of those flimsy clip-on protectors that was supposed to guard your lungs from thick dust at the corn harvest, but he knew that would have been virtually useless. Only a nuclear shelter fitted with an elaborate air-filter system would have kept this lot out.

He tasted the atmosphere, a kind of pungent bitter-sweetness akin to the aroma that hit you when you walked into a hospital, trying to fool you that it was some kind of cleansing agent. Only when it hit the back of your throat and seemed to burn your tonsils, were you aware of the harm it was doing you.

This one was a new one, he was sure of that. Stronger, heavier, so that it hung low and did not disperse quickly in the atmosphere. Trial-testing, no doubt. Roeders were permitted to experiment before submitting samples to ADAS for approval. Les had already investigated that point. ‘Minute quantities’ was how the authorities had explained it away; a change of phrase from ‘acceptable levels’. A product has to be tested in the open air, they had explained in a lengthy, verbose letter to him a few months after the research station had commenced outdoor testing. He had their assurance (their excuse) that all precautions were being taken to ensure the safety of the surrounding countryside and its inhabitants. Which, he reflected, was a load of old balls, when theory was replaced by practice.

The goats, browsing the hedge at the far end of the three-acre field, saw him, bleated and came towards him at a run, as though they were eager to get back inside the gloomy old shed because they thought they would be safe in there. You could fool humans sometimes, Les thought, but there was no fooling animals.

‘Come on, girls.’ He opened the gate and held it wide whilst they jostled one another to pass through. ‘Yet another new poison has been inflicted upon us. Maybe this one kills quickly, stops you lingering on in ill health for years. We shall see.’ He laughed but it sounded strained. There was no way he was going to be able to reassure himself and believe what the chemists and their minions tried to tell people. Lies were a way of life, almost an accepted one.

A stranger would have been at a loss to even hazard a guess at Les Earnshaw's age. His hair had turned grey in his early twenties, and yet the bushy beard which Diane had persuaded him to grow shortly after they were married had remained jet-black. The weight which he had once carried had either been shed or else turned to muscle in the rigours of farming the ‘proper’ way - no machinery, everything done manually. His features were etched with lines, and he had the dark eyes of a man who thought things out for himself and did not accept the words of others at face value. At thirty-eight, he told himself, he was still learning. And when you stopped learning it was time to pack it all in and vegetate.

‘Close the door behind you, please.’ Diane's voice reached him from the kitchen as he entered the house and kicked off his wellington boots in the porch. The cardinal sin at the Dingle was to walk through into the kitchen wearing muddy boots. ‘There's something decidedly nasty outside.’

‘I'm well aware of that.’ The aroma of lentil stew which greeted him was invigorating, almost making him forget. ‘They're testing a new one, judging by the stink,’

Her smile was forced as she nodded, the furrows in her wide brow matching his own. She was attractive, and even the voluminous green tracksuit did not disguise her shapely figure. Fashionable yet not to the detriment of country living, Diane had the gift of blending into her surroundings. She was a farmer's wife, she constantly reminded herself, but not a conventional farmer's wife. Like her husband, she made up her own mind about things and did them her way. And in conventional rural communities that was often frowned upon. But to hell with them!

‘What are you going to do about it, Les?’ (Not ‘Are you going to do anything about it?’)

‘I'm working on it.’ He pulled a chair up to the table and lowered himself into it. ‘Writing to the Tribune is old hat and, anyway, Wilkinson's called a halt to “agrochem war” correspondence, as he calls it.’

‘You reckon they've got at him?’

‘Could be, although I doubt it. I'm only small fry even if I do raise up quite a following. More likely Johnson's had a quiet word with him, pointing out that for generations the Tribune's been a farming paper and it isn't good policy to criticize the farmers. Anyway, I think a new technique is called for.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like maybe getting on television.’

‘And why should the TV people suddenly show any interest in a small farmer with less than twenty acres and old-fashioned ideas?’ She grinned.

‘Maybe they might just think me odd enough to give me a five-minute slot and let me spout a few ideas.’

‘Which will be edited, of course. They'll make you out to be an oddity they've picked up just to help fill the six o'clock regional programme.’

Footsteps drummed down the stairs and a small flaxen-haired girl burst into the room. She was dressed in a neat second-hand jumpsuit, which Diane had picked up at the school jumble sale for l0p, and she had wide blue eyes and a ready smile.

‘Mummy, can I go down to the pond and see if there's any frog-spawn? Miss Richards wants us to bring some to school tomorrow.’

‘No, dear,’ Diane began ladling steaming stew on to three plates. ‘Dinner's ready.’

‘Oh but, Mummy, Miss Richards said we had to bring some and -’

‘Then you should have thought of that when you came home from school.’

‘I had my homework to do, Daddy.’ A change of tactics, a note of pleading crept into her shrill voice: ‘Can I go down to the pond after dinner?’

‘It'll be getting dark.’ Les dropped his eyes to the floor. ‘You know we don't like you playing down by the pond when it's getting late.’

‘Oh but … but I have to.’

‘None of us are going outside tonight.’ Diane's voice was firm almost to the point of anger as she put the plates on the table. ‘The furthest Daddy is going is across the yard to milk the goats. Haven't you smelled it out there, Emma?’

‘Yes,’ the child nodded, and slid into her seat. ‘I smelled it when I came home from school. It smells like … like poison. It … it won't kill us, will it?’

‘No.’ Les Earnshaw's voice lacked conviction, sounding lame - like the time when he had tried to convince the vet that Gubbins, their first goat, had not got enterotoxaemia and three days later the animal had died. ‘No, it won't kill us.’ Not immediately, anyway, he added to himself.

Mary Wiseman had felt the headache coming on since early afternoon. A robust woman in her mid-fifties with greying hair, she tried to find all kinds of reasons for the throbbing behind her eyes which was spreading across her forehead. A migraine? It was unlikely because she never suffered from them and had barely experienced a headache during the whole of her life. High blood pressure? The doctor had said she ought to lose weight, but he was a bit vague about her blood-pressure reading the last time he took it, and that was nearly two years ago. The change? She had gone through that almost a decade ago and it was unlikely that it was affecting her after all this time.

She had to be honest with herself; it wasn't just a reason she was seeking but an excuse. An excuse because of an inbred loyalty to her husband, a sense of duty that urged her to stick by him through thick and thin, right or wrong, trying to force herself to believe that Joe was always right because he could not possibly be wrong. But somewhere deep inside her a little voice was saying ‘its these damned sprays that are doing it’.

Guiltily staring down at her plate of food, she thought that she might be blushing, that Joe might notice.

‘You'm not lookin' well.’ Joe Wiseman spoke through a mouthful of salted bacon, smacking his lips the way he always did - something she had longed to tell him about during the early days of their marriage but had refrained from doing because it wasn't her place to speak out. Now, suddenly, his crudity angered her. She saw a red-faced farmer sitting on the opposite side of the table, unwashed, dandruff like silver Christmas tinsel in his wiry hair, grubby hands gripping knife and fork with a belligerence to which she had become accustomed. Overweight. Revolting.

‘I've had a headache most of the day.’ Her voice seemed to come from afar, vibrating her throbbing head even more.

‘It's all this book readin'.’ Food particles sprayed in all directions. ‘Never was no good to nobody.’

You ignorant pig, she thought. Her temples were pounding, not just with the pain but with an anger which had been cooped up for far too long. Finally she got out the words which she had been holding back for a very long time, letting them come in a rush.

‘It's these damned sprays that are doing it.’

Joe Wiseman stared, and stopped chewing for a few seconds, his mouth wide in amazement, wondering if he had heard correctly, giving Mary an unrestricted view of a mulch of partially chewed bacon.

‘Don't be bloody stupid,’ he grunted at length. ‘You've bin listenin' to what that headcase at the Dingle has been saying.’

‘He's right.’ She somehow found the courage to meet Joe's gaze, her features suddenly pallid, her lips thin bloodless lines. ‘They're slowly killing us all, Joe. It's wrong, it's against nature. Just think back to that time last year when you sprayed the carrots. You stunk for a week afterwards and even the washing machine couldn't get the smell out of your clothes.’

‘It wanna 'urt.’ His complexion was a deep red now, his tiny eyes almost buried in their fleshy sockets, blazing an anger which she had never before witnessed in him. ‘You ask Johnson at the union office, 'e'll put you right.’

‘Of course he will.’ Her voice had taken on a shrill pitch. ‘Because he's as bad as you and the rest of these farmers. Money. Greed. That's what it's all about, and to hell with everybody and everything. Grow crops that look right and sell, but it doesn't matter a damn what you're doing to the environment and people.’

‘Shut up!’ His hoarse shout showered bits of bacon down his chin and on to the table. ‘Shut your face, woman!’

‘I won't.’ She rose to her feet and scraped her chair back noisily, every muscle in her body trembling. In thirty-three years she had never once stood up to her husband but now she wasn't holding back. It had been a long time coming, but this was it. ‘It's time you were told a few home truths, Joe Wiseman. You're blinded by all the propaganda these chemical reps feed you. A bit of book reading would do you good, open up your closed indoctrinated mind, although personally I think it's too late for that now.’

‘Shut up, I say. Be quiet.’ He banged the table with the handles of his knife and fork. ‘I won't be spoken to like this.’ The jowls under his chin were beginning to shake.

‘You will, and, furthermore, you'll listen.’ She knew that she was shouting but she did not care. ‘You and the rest of your farming cronies, together with these agrochemical blokes, have got a lot to answer for. Right now I'm ill. OK, so it's only a headache, but I damned well know where it's come from. Maybe tomorrow it'll be gone, maybe not. It could be the start of something more serious.’

‘Like … what?’ He closed his mouth and swallowed the remnants of his masticated food with some difficulty.

‘Like … leukaemia. The way’ - she fought to control a sob - ‘Sarah … died. Our own daughter, just in case you had forgotten.’

‘That's ridiculous.’

‘Is it? Do you know where she contracted it, then?’

‘Of course not.’ He fidgeted uneasily with the cutlery, staring past her at the wall. ‘Nobody does.’

‘Oh yes they do.’ Her voice was low, an angry hiss, her eyes welling up with the fears she had held back for too long. ‘Perhaps people are afraid to voice their thoughts round here. Not like those people up in Cumbria who have lost their dear children and aren't scared to stand up and blame the nuclear-waste leaks. Radioactive contamination, agrochemical pollution of the atmosphere, what's the difference? People die and keep on dying and all the time the authorities are blaming other causes or pretending they don't know. All for money. It makes me sick, Joe. And you make me sick, too.’

‘It was the hospital's fault,’ he mumbled. ‘They took so long to come up with the result of Sarah's blood test.’

‘They're not blameless,’ she sighed, taking a deep breath. ‘But that's not the point. Sarah got the disease because every lungful of air she breathed was contaminated with some chemical or other. Just like we are breathing now.’ Mary braced herself for one last shout. ‘And that's why I've got a bloody headache!’

She clutched the chair for support, knowing she was physically and mentally spent, that it would take all her strength to climb the stairs and stagger across the landing into the bedroom and pull the curtains. The darkness, the quietness was calling her.

‘You'm wrong,’ he said at last, but there was no conviction in his tone. ‘You'm got carried away. But right or wrong we have to have those sprays. The country would starve if we didn't use 'em. If them are killers, which they aren't, then we got a choice of ways o' dyin'. You can't have it both ways. Starve or be poisoned.’

He watched her walk unsteadily to the foot of the wide oak staircase and begin to mount, a step at a time. She looked bad, all right, he noticed, but she was making herself worse getting all worked up like that. It was that fellow down at the Dingle who was doing all this, feeding his theories to folks and whipping up hysteria. He was no better than those bloody lefties you heard spouting on the telly. Rhetoric, a string of lies learnt off pat, and if people listened long enough they believed them. But Earnshaw would overstep the mark before long and the chemical companies would sort him out. That was a stone blind certainty, he consoled himself.

Joe Wiseman got up from the table and went outside into the yard, and stood there sniffing the air. Sure you could smell whatever it was they were spraying on the trial ground up at the research centre, he conceded. You were bound to; all sprays drifted on the wind. They had to because the only way to stop that was to modify the spraying equipment so that they sprayed bigger globules and that was wasteful, costly.

He stamped across the yard towards the tractor. Folks were bloody ungrateful, he thought. You did everything possible to grow 'em the best food, made sure they all got enough, and then they turned round and bit the hands that fed them.

Mary would be OK after a good night's sleep, he reckoned. She would have forgotten her outburst by tomorrow. The tractor fired, belching thick black clouds of diesel fumes. It would be dark in another couple of hours; there was just enough daylight left to spray an acre or two of that winter barley.

The spraydrift lingered in Pen-y-Cwm for three days, seeming to grow more pungent with each passing hour. And then on the fourth day the prevailing wind strengthened and brought with it heavy rain.

On the fifth day the atmosphere was cleansed and the villagers breathed in the freshness of a spring morning.

1

JULY

The summer had been a long hot one, endless days of scorching sunshine that stretched right back to the second week of May, and the experts claimed that it surpassed even 1976. Warnings of vegetable shortages and steep price increases followed the water restrictions. Standpipes had been in use in most parts of Britain for nearly three weeks now.

‘Which won't apply at the Dingle,’ Les Earnshaw said smugly, with an eye on the television across the tea table. ‘Converting that acre to raised beds has paid off. The mulch held the moisture, and with intensive growing you get a bigger yield. Proportionally we can show old Joe Wiseman a thing or two, and we don't have to fork out forty grand a year on sprays.’

‘I see we've got aphids bad,’ Diane remarked. ‘Those second-sowing daffa beans are black with the fly.’

‘I know,’ Les chewed thoughtfully, ‘I've mixed up some more quassia chips and I'll hammer 'em later tonight. There's caterpillars crawling all over the brassicas and they can have a dose of quassia too. I might even boil up some garlic corms just to give 'em a real good blistering. And as if that isn't enough we've got whitefly and red spider in the glasshouses. Not to mention earwigs. Ugh!’

‘In other words it's the Year of the Pest,’ Diana replied. ‘It may be my imagination but there seems to be some whopping specimens about. I saw an earwig this morning that looked twice its normal size.’

‘You get freaks in a freak year,’ he sighed, ‘but we'll beat 'em … and without agrochemicals.’

‘Things seem to have gone quiet lately,’ she mused.

‘The lull before the storm maybe. Roeder and his accomplices are no doubt busy in their laboratories concocting new poisons, maybe one big one that will kill everything, us included, and have done with it.’

‘I see in the farming press this week that the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service have advised farmers to use less nitrates, but the chemical companies have urged them to use more.’ She pulled a wry face.

‘Serve the likes of Roeder right if ADAS refused to pass their new products,’ Les smiled. ‘Get their bloody own back. But they won't, of course. Funny thing, in spite of all this spraying up and down the country there's more pests about than ever before, and not just on our land. Maybe they're not interested in killing the pests any more, just us.’

‘Daddy.’ Emma helped herself to another spoonful of salad out of the bowl. ‘Can I go down to the big pond after tea? It's a long time until dark yet.’

Les glanced across at Diane, seeking a mute reaction from his wife. A half-smile and a nod; the big pond was almost dried up anyway, just a muddy puddle in the middle of the caked clay, surrounded by thick reeds.

‘I suppose so.’ For some reason he was never keen on their young daughter playing at the furthermost point of their boundary. The local policeman had once remarked that ‘things like that are unlikely to happen in an area like this’, which was plain daft. You always worried in case it did; you only needed one child-killer straying outside his usual hunting ground. ‘But don't get stopping down there till dark. I shall be angry if I have to come and look for you.’

‘I won't.’ She began to eat hurriedly. ‘I just like to listen to the frogs and the grasshoppers in the evening.’

Emma got up from the table, took her empty plate across to the sink. ‘See you later Dad, Mum.’

‘And don't be late.’

They listened to her receding footsteps, and felt a slight uneasiness for no accountable reason. Most children in Pen-y-Cwm went out to play in the countryside; apart from the chemical dangers, it was a healthy occupation. But they worried all the same; it was a natural parental reaction.

‘I reckon I'll leave the spraying until tomorrow.’ Les laughed and added, ‘Organically, of course. I'll bet Roeder would be at a loss to know what to do with a pound of quassia chips or a handful of garlic corms.’

‘I'd love to know what they're up to at the centre.’ Diane began clearing the table. ‘There hasn't been a whiff of spray from that trial ground of theirs for weeks. It's uncanny.’

‘Times like these you get a feeling of helplessness,’ he replied. ‘You just plod on promoting the organic movement but feel you're getting nowhere. I guess this hot summer has meant most farmers are concentrating all their efforts on irrigation. They reckon it needs to rain solidly every day from October to Christmas if the reservoir levels up in the Elan Valley are to rise back up to where they were last March.’

Talking for the sake of talking because they were apprehensive, sensing that something was going to happen, fearful of what it might be.

It took Emma no more than five minutes to reach what remained of the big pond. Dressed in only a T-shirt and shorts, she squatted on a big flat stone on the edge of the reed bed. It was as though the stone had been placed there by somebody especially to give her an elevated view of the pool, dangling her legs over the side, watching and waiting. It was a bit early to hear the frogs croaking yet; they usually waited until the sun went down. Another half-hour, no more. But she must not be late home. She had promised.

Only another seven weeks until she started at the big school in town. In some ways she was looking forward to it, in others she was apprehensive. No longer would Mummy or Daddy take her the five-minute ride in the Land-Rover to the school in the village. She would have to catch the school bus each morning, a journey of half an hour. A step into the outside world. It made her nervous. New faces, feeling her way cautiously, making new friends.

She wouldn't be sorry to leave Pen-y-Cwm, though. This last term there had been a feeling of hostility towards her by a number of the other pupils. Nothing that she could really put her finger on, mostly snide remarks from some of the farmers' children. As though their parents had put them up to it, to get back at the Earnshaws through their child, give 'em some stick, put 'em in their place.

‘Hey, Emma, is it right about your mum being a vegetarian?’ Danny Lewis had asked in a loud voice on the playground one morning. ‘That means eating rabbit food all the time, doesn't it?’

And, more insidiously, from Bryan Wiseman, a nephew of Joe Wiseman, ‘My uncle says your dad's no farmer, Emma. He gets his living from writing to the newspapers about things he knows nothing about. Uncle Joe says a good bath in the sheep dip would do him good!’

Last autumn there had been open hostility from several of the farming children following a complaint Emma's father had made to PC Evans about hedge cuttings scattered along the lanes. There was nothing new in that; everybody had punctures during October and November, mostly on the lanes bordering the Fletchers' farm. PC Evans had gone and warned Bill Fletcher, checked his flail cutter and told him to get a shield fixed on it so that the gobbled up foliage would be thrown into the hedge bottoms instead of on the roads. The officer had warned him to put a registration plate on his tractor too. Bill Fletcher had been furious, but he was forced to fit a shield on his hedger.

A few days later Emma's lunch box had gone missing from the school cloakroom. She knew only too well that Alan Fletcher had stolen it; Daddy was right, a few of these farmers thought they could ride roughshod over the community. They were good at handing out the rough stuff but they didn't like it when they were on the receiving end. But Emma had had the last laugh a few weeks later when Bill Fletcher had been prosecuted by the police for driving his tractor after lighting-up time without lights, and in his arrogance the farmer had not fixed the number plate which he had been warned about. £20 plus £10 costs.

But Daddy wasn't going to win this chemical war, she decided. It was too big an issue, it was going on all over the country, and in America too. But she did not want him to give up the fight, because he was in the right and it made her feel proud of him. He was her champion.

The sun was slipping behind the towering mountains that rose up above Pen-y-Cwm and the sky was beginning to turn saffron. And that was when she heard the first frog begin to croak.

It was close, maybe only a couple of yards or so away in the reeds, making a sort of growling sound. A tiny shiver touched her spine like a sudden drop of cold thunder rain. The noise somehow didn't sound quite right. She could not explain why; she knew it was a frog because she had heard them often enough, had raised them from tadpoles in jam jars at school. It was loud, maybe too loud. She cocked her head to one side and waited for it to call again.

The sound came a second time, a kind of bellow, sending the shiver right the way up her spine and goose pimpling her flesh. Usually frogs sounded so contented, so peaceful. This one sounded … angry.

Even as she watched, the rushes began to move, bending over, rustling. Emma shuddered; frogs didn't move foliage to that extent, not unless there were lots of them. Suddenly they did not seem such friendly harmless creatures after all. That was nonsense; of course they were harmless. Miss Richards had said so.

Then she saw it, and stared in disbelief. It was a frog, all right. At least, she thought it was, from the squat head and bulging eyes that focused on her, the flat mouth opening and closing. The yellowish-green body glistened with slime, glinted in the last rays of the setting sun.

It was a frog. It had to be. Emma was desperately trying to convince herself, her mouth suddenly dry. The shape, the colourings were right. Only the size was wrong. It should have stood no more than a couple of inches high, small enough to squat in the palm of her hand. But this creature was at least six inches in height, its body fat and bloated, as big as a baby rabbit!

The child's mind groped for logic, for reasons. Maybe it was a big daddy frog. Or a different species. Miss Richards at school had shown the class pictures of huge bullfrogs that lived in other countries, in swamplands.

Emma drew her legs back up on to the big stone, tensed and huddled her body. Looking at it again, she found her gaze drawn irresistibly to those reptilian eyes. The frog was watching her, but there was something more than just a casual interest reflected in that baleful stare. It was persistent, malevolent, an unblinking hatred that had Emma Earnshaw's flesh trembling in spite of the warmth of the evening.

How long she sat there looking at it she had no idea. It might have been a few seconds, it might have been ten minutes. A visual exchange, a mute confrontation. I hate you child, I'm going to bite you!

The amphibian lumbered rather than hopped a few inches nearer, a bulbous slimy evil mass jellying towards her, and all the time it never took its eyes off her. I'm coming to get you, little girl!

Another noise; perhaps it had suddenly started up or maybe it had been there all along and she had not noticed it. A background orchestra, growing in volume, like tuneless violins being scratched, a harsh cacophony that vibrated in her brain, escalating her terror.

She knew they were grasshoppers, but never before had they been as loud as this screeching crescendo, which seemed to be urging the repulsive overgrown reptile to attack the human. Nature's army of evil lurking in the long grass. Attack! Attack! Kill!

The giant frog was nearer, less than a yard away, its skin pulsing, squatting again as though gathering its strength for one mighty leap that would take it up on to the stone. Any second …

Emma did not scream. Her mouth opened, her vocal chords strained in an attempt to release her abject terror, but no sound came from her lips, not even a grunt of childlike terror.

She stood up, swayed, almost fell forward. And then somehow she leaped sideways, managing to land on her feet on the parched ground. Something crunched beneath the soles of her sneakers, like Rice Krispies popping as they were crushed to powder. The chorus came at her from all sides, louder and more angry than before, insect screams of hatred calling for the death of one who had crushed their colleagues.

Then she was running, forcibly dragging her gaze away from the frog's hypnotic stare, moving one leg in front of the other, feeling tiny bodies snapping beneath her, the insect cries coming up at her like a living evil force.

She ran. And she screamed, gasping for breath, wishing that she could fly like she sometimes did in those awful dreams when nasty things were in pursuit. Her body movements seemed sluggish, so slow, each stride a mammoth effort. She dared not look behind her because she knew that awful frog was coming after her, wobbling and bouncing, somehow managing to propel its revolting bulk along.

Run! Oh, the house was never this far from the big pond. Not even daring to glance down in case she saw a host of awful long-legged insects, the brushing of dry grasses against her bare legs became insects groping obscenely for her.

The orchard. She found herself searching for Elsie, the Tamworth sow they kept as a pet. Where are you, Elsie? Help me, Elsie, before they catch me. Or the goats in the adjoining field, if they had not already been taken in for milking. Anything, anybody, help me.

She was too breathless even to scream by the time she reached the yard. Hauling herself up on to the aluminium five-barred gate, she perched there, feeling temporarily safe because neither frogs nor grasshoppers could jump that high. Dizzy, holding on with cold sweaty hands, terrified in case she fell, she lay full-length, trying to wrap her legs in between the bars and secure a hold.

‘Emma!’ Diane screamed through the open kitchen window, and seconds later Les was coming out of the big building on the run.

‘Emma.’ He ran towards her. ‘What on earth's going on?’ Oh God, he thought, you only had to look at the girl's expression to read her terror and see the whiteness of her pert features, the way she trembled and was likely to fall at any second.‘Emma!’

Diane grabbed the child, hauled her off the gate and cradled her to her breast.

‘What is it?’ Les's voice was terse. ‘What's going on?’

The second or two of tension seemed an eternity. Emma's lips were moving, trembling violently, mouthing mute words; her shaking hand pointed back across the field.

‘Maybe we should get the doctor.’ Les felt he had to say something, to make some contribution to this inexplicable incident.

‘Frog?’ Diane gasped. ‘What frog? Where?’

‘Big pond.’ The small girl's teeth were chattering. ‘Big frog … very big … big as Bonzo.’

‘No frog could be as big as Bonzo. That's impossible.’ Diane was half-chiding, half-humouring her daughter. Bonzo, Emma's latest acquisition, a baby rabbit bought from the pet shop in town a fortnight ago, was several times the size of a frog. ‘Are you sure you haven't been imagining things, playing games of make-believe down by the pond?’

‘No!’ she hissed in fear, her blue eyes closing again, her tiny fingers pinching her mother's skin so that Diane almost cried out. ‘It was real and it was as big as Bonzo.’

‘All right, all right, dear, you saw a frog as big as Bonzo.’ Clutching the girl to her, Diane began to walk back in the direction of the house. Les brought up the rear. ‘But right now I'm going to give you an aspirin and a drink, and then it's up to bed. It's nearly bedtime, anyway.’

‘I'm going to go and have a look down by the pond.’ Les paused in the doorway, then felt foolish as his wife turned back to look at him. ‘I mean, we'd better just be sure there aren't any monster frogs hopping about the place, hadn't we?’

‘If you want to.’ You'll be seeing things next, her look seemed to say.

‘I won't be long.’ He turned away, picking up the forked ash stick which he usually carried with him on his chores around the farm. The thought crossed his mind that it would make a suitable weapon, but he dismissed it. It was nonsense even to think that there might be frogs as big as rabbits. But those aphids on the beans were a bit oversized, he had to admit. And the caterpillars on the brassicas were rather large too.

It was almost dusk, one of those evenings when it would be very pleasant to sit down at some vantage point on the farm and just take stock of things, relax and watch, and let the rest of the world go by. Except that he didn't feel like relaxing; he was taut, nervy suddenly.

If it didn't rain within the next fortnight the pool would probably dry up altogether, Les reflected as he stood staring at that diminishing puddle. When that happened he would have to start bringing in water for the livestock, carting it in containers from the river, an irksome and time-consuming job. The weathermen were not hopeful of any rain in the immediate future, just isolated showers in the north of Scotland. Typical. Whatever you wanted the weather to do it never did it.

Well, there did not appear to be any frogs about at all; not so much as a lazy late evening croak was coming from the thick rushes. They had probably all emigrated down to the river, and who could blame them? Just grasshoppers; he could not see them but he could hear them all right. Christ, what a din!

He stood there just listening. The insects were really tuning up tonight and their noise did not have its usual sound of tranquillity about it; it was harsh, nasty, vicious. He felt uneasy, the way he did when there was a thunderstorm brewing.

The dry grass rustled against his heavy working boots and he trod on something that crunched, which gave him a mild feeling of revulsion. A beetle, probably - it was too dark to see. The chorus intensified, a tuneless cacophony of hate directed at himself. Now you are getting ridiculous, Les Earnshaw, letting your nerves get the better of you, he told himself. The best thing you can do is get back home and see how Emma is. Run, because you're afraid to stay here in the dark. You're scared.

He walked swiftly away, his step quickening, relieved when he arrived back at the gate leading into the yard.

Emma was back down by the big pond squatting on the big flat stone again. She could not remember having left the house and walking here. She didn't want to come back, could not think why she had. And she was afraid.

Her keen eyes peered into the deepening dusk; the puddle was almost invisible in the shadows cast by the tall reeds. And all about her those awful grasshoppers were screeching, a frightening abrasive sound that had her clasping her hands to her ears and trying to shut it out. I want to go home but I can't move, she thought, and began to cry softly.

Something moved in the deep darkness on the opposite side of the pool. She sensed it rather than saw it, a shape that was fat and slimy and horrid. Oh no!

Emma knew it was the monstrous frog again. She heard it hop once, twice - a noise like a saturated bath sponge splatting on the floor. It was coming towards her. She wanted to close her eyes so that she would not see it, but even her eyelids refused to move. She was petrified with stark terror.

Closer and closer it came, with slow deliberate hops, and if she could have screamed she would have done so when finally she made out its obese silhouette. Its eyes seemed to glow in the dark, pinpoints of cold evil, its mouth wide in a leering grin. You won't escape me this time, little girl!

Please, I haven't done anything to you, frog. It was like a macabre take-off of The Wind in the Willows, a sick parody.

Haven't you? The reptilian mouth opened wide in a leering grin. You humans are trying to wipe us out. Look what you've done to me. And the grasshoppers. We're going to kill you and eat you.

She drew her legs up right under her, but she realized even that bulbous creature was capable of jumping up on to the stone. The frog quivered; it was testing its cold slippery body ready for the leap, straining. Its fish-like eyes were bulging, glowing with malevolence.

And that was when movement returned to Emma's limbs; everything was like a slow-motion re-run of what had gone before. Rolling off her perch, scrambling up, she started to flee. Oh, it was so slow, dragging her legs, trying to force them to move faster but they felt weighted down as though her sneakers were leaden boots.

The grasshopper chorus came from all directions, a vibrant living force that hurt. Look what you've done to us, little girl. We're going to kill you and eat you!

She glanced behind as she stumbled blindly on. Even in the dark she could see the frog clearly, a loathsome thing that reminded her of the rubber spacehopper in the playroom at school, with leering features, cumbersome yet agile. And all around, glowing in the shadows, tiny malignant eyes watched her, a million angry insects urging the big frog on, speeding up their discordant playing, sawing frantically with their spindly legs. Catch her, frog. You're gaining!

Her heart was pounding and there was a roaring in her ears. She drove her legs ruthlessly, but still they dragged. An aura of light reminded her of the dim nightlight her parents had set on her bedside table when she was small; in a way it was more frightening than the dark because it created shadows, inexplicable shapes that hovered in the background.

The creature must get her any second, she knew. She heard its wet feet on the dry ground only inches behind her, the sloppy sound of its belly every time it landed. Breathing like a pair of bellows, its repulsive body inflating and deflating alternately.

And then she fell. Vertigo flooded her in a wave of sickening dizziness as she plunged forward in the darkness, braced herself, and hit the ground. Winded, crying, not wanting to look, she couldn't go any further. If only Daddy would suddenly appear, she wished, he would kill that frog, crush it to a mulch beneath his heavy working boots.

It touched her. She felt its coldness, its sliminess, that mouth fastening on to her arm like an icy suction pad. And that was when she screamed, giving vent to her terror in one piercing yell.

She was writhing, kicking, rolling one way then the other, and all around she saw a myriad of fiery pinpoints as the grasshoppers closed in, a vile gathering, an orchestra playing a symphony of death, the tempo rising to a crescendo of sadistic enjoyment.

She fought, struck out with her free arm and tried to dislodge her attacker, but its grip only tightened. It was shaking her frantically, yelling …

‘Stop it, Emma! Wake up!’

A slow awakening, as lethargic as her flight had been, then she was mumbling incoherently because she could not find the words. Those eyes had brightened, giving off a light that blinded her and brought her headache back. Then in stages she clawed her way out of the depths of nightmarish fantasies and into the stark reality of her own bedroom.

Emma lay there staring, blinking in the bright light, trying to coordinate her thoughts. The pool, the frog, the grasshoppers had gone and in their place were her mother and father gazing down anxiously at her. Her nightdress and the undersheet were damp with her sweat.

‘Emma, you've had a nightmare.’ Diane was naked, the way she always slept, her dark hair awry, her features pallid and twisted with concern. Behind her Les stood helplessly, wearing only a pair of briefs.

‘The … frog,’ Emma glanced fearfully about her; she had to make sure that it had not followed her into the room. ‘It … it caught me.’

‘No, it didn't.’ Diane tried to smile. ‘Because it only exists in your mind. You've had a nightmare.’

‘But it was real down by the pool the time before.’

‘That's nonsense. Daddy went to look and there were no frogs there at all. The pond's nearly dried up. All the frogs have gone to live in the river.’

‘It was real.’ She stubbornly refused to be reassured. Her parents had not been there, they could not possibly know. ‘I know it was 'cause I saw it. As big as Bonzo.’

‘I don't think you'd better go to school tomorrow.’ Diane felt the child's forehead: it was hot and damp. ‘You've got a temperature, you could be sickening for something. There's an epidemic of mumps in town. Now listen, we'll leave the landing light on and your door and our door open. If you want us, call us.’

Emma nodded. There wasn't anything else to say. There was a huge frog living in the reeds around the big pond; there was no getting away from that. In all probability it had heard Daddy coming and hidden, she decided.

‘This is beginning to worry me,’ Diane whispered as she slid into bed alongside Les. ‘This frog business is playing on her mind.’

‘Well, there weren't any frogs in what's left of the pond,’ Les answered. ‘You can take it from me.’

‘But you should see the size of those aphids on the daffas.’ She lowered her voice still further. ‘They're as big as … as ants. And that's not natural. I get a sort of uneasy feeling that there's something going on out there, Les. Something dangerous.’

2

Martha Vickers had stayed on in the bungalow after her husband died five years ago. Small and frail, with wispy grey hair done up in a bun on the back of her head, she had flatly refused to go and live with her son and daughter-in-law in Llangollen. Once she agreed to that, her independence, her freedom would be gone. She had listened to their arguments. ‘But you're seventy-five next birthday, Mother. Suppose you were taken ill. And you can't possibly manage the house and the garden.’

She could and she did. A bungalow did not take much looking after and she enjoyed pottering about in the garden. Mr Spencer came once a week for half a day and saw to the heavy work. She could cope with the rest, particularly this summer, because the weeds and the lawn at the front had not been growing as they usually did. And if there was one thing she appreciated it was having her own vegetable patch, small as it was.

‘You don't need to grow a lot of stuff when you live on your own,’ she had told Mrs Morris at the village post office only last week. ‘A little bit of this and a few of that will see you through nicely. The trouble with this hot weather is the pests. I used a whole can of derris powder trying to kill the greenfly on the roses yesterday, and the caterpillars on my cabbages have to be seen to be believed. They're as big as my fingers.’

Everybody in the village, it seemed, according to Mrs Morris, was having trouble with aphids and caterpillars. ‘I'm sure there's some stuff you can buy to spray them with,’ she concluded. ‘Mr Gwilliam bought some kind of insect-killer from the chemist's in town last week but I haven't heard how he's got on with it.’

‘Over my dead body,’ Martha retorted. ‘Once you start doing that you're as bad as that lot at the chemicals place up the road.’

She agreed with everything that Les Earnshaw had said in his letters to the Tribune. These chaps were intent on poisoning the countryside, encouraging the farmers to spray more and more deadly chemicals on the land. She was sure that that was the cause of a lot of the mystery illnesses that people got nowadays, allergies and viruses that came and went and nobody could explain. The government should do something about it: restrict the use of sprays if they weren't prepared to ban them altogether, make those lazy farmers work for their living instead of taking the easy way out. The only place where you saw anybody actually hoeing the fields was up at the Dingle Farm. Les Earnshaw practised what he preached and Martha admired him for it. Out of all those who agreed with his philosophies, very few actually did anything about it. If the government weren't prepared to make a stand then the doctors should, but they were afraid of being caught up in a wave of ‘back to nature’. Look what a fuss they made when Prince Charles officially opened the Grove Hospital in Bristol, Martha remembered. They accused him of putting his seal of approval on alternative medicine. They didn't like that one little bit because they relied on drugs and chemicals too. Even Doctor Barnett was prescribing them these days, and gone was the time when he would make you up a mixture of his own.

There was no doubt about it, Martha decided, as she trudged back along the main street with her heavily laden carrier bags, the doctors were becoming like the farmers, taking the easy way out, relying on the chemical industries. And it frightened her.

She knew that she sometimes annoyed the taciturn Mrs Morris. And serve her right! Martha wasn't going to be conditioned into buying convenience foods just for the benefit of the woman who ran the general stores and post office. No way. It was a pity somebody didn't come along and start up a wholefood and health food shop in Pen-y-Cwm. If that happened then the only thing she would ever buy off Mrs Morris again would be the occasional stamp. And the postmistress would still have to cash Martha's pension every Thursday. Martha would really enjoy that, not that it was ever likely to happen in a tiny place like this. It was nice to dream about it, though.

Nevertheless, much to Mrs Morris's chagrin, Martha Vickers shopped as discriminately as was possible in a village shop and never mind the penetrating stares and tongue-clicking from the other side of the counter. Read the labels on every product, that was her rule number one, and check the list of ingredients minutely. Anything containing preservatives was returned to the shelves. Damn these mass-produced junk foods, she thought. There's sugar in nearly everything; look for brands containing raw sugar and fibre. Very few of them. ‘Emulsifiers’ was a word she did not trust; it incorporated an awful lot of things. Too many.

Martha had asked Mrs Morris to lay in a supply of sugar-free canned fruits. Her request was met with a stony stare, merging into raised eyebrows and a tightening of the lips. She did not know of any, and even if she did her suppliers would be reluctant to supply her. Why? Hesitation, then the stock answer. There was no demand for them, she'd be stuck with them. No, you wouldn't, because I would buy at least three cans a week. The shopkeeper kept her thoughts to herself but her expression said clearly: ‘What if you drop dead next week?’ I won't, I can assure you of that. Something was scribbled on a jotter. Martha wished that her eyesight had been good enough to see it, but in any case the scrawl was probably illegible.

She was still waiting for those cans of sugar-free fruit. She asked for them every Thursday. The answer was always the same - they were on order. But she would keep on reminding Mrs Morris, if only to annoy her.

Martha had a slight headache today, probably due to the fact that it was Thursday and she had had her weekly verbal cut-and-thrust down at the stores. Or it could be her blood pressure playing up again.

She let herself in through the back door and lifted her carrier bags up on to the table. In one were two loaves of wholewheat sliced bread, commercially baked of course, claiming that there was nothing taken out. That was fine, but it was what had been put in that worried her. Still, it was the best she could do until she made her monthly trip into town; Mrs Morris certainly was not going to ask her bread supplier to include the odd fresh granary or privately baked wholemeal. Too much damned trouble for an over-fussy customer.

Martha thought about going down to the surgery that afternoon. Doctor Barnett still ran his Thursday afternoon consultations, in spite of the fact that he was nearing retirement. He had started them back in the fifties for the convenience of out-lying patients in this scattered community. It came in handy sometimes, there was generally an empty waiting room and she was seen promptly. The doctor had time to chat to her, and she did not have to worry about keeping other patients waiting. Almost a social affair.

No, she would not go, she thought. He might thrust some newfangled drugs on her. She could always tip them down the WC, but that wasn't the point; the doctor might think that she was taking them, and that was against her principles. She was prepared to stand up and be counted.

She still had one or two of those concentrated fish oil capsules left and they had worked wonders before. She made a mental note to buy some more on her next visit to town; she must discipline herself to take them regularly.

It was hotter than ever today. She dozed in the armchair after lunch, promising herself a fresh salad for tea; there were some nice hearted lettuces ready in the garden, and a hard cabbage for coleslaw.

It was 5.30 when she awoke. She had not meant to drop off to sleep, but her headache was nearly gone, so her rest had had its compensations. Or maybe the MaxEPA tablets had done the trick.

The heat of the day came at her like a fiery dragon's breath as she stepped out on to the patio. Insects buzzed loudly, mostly flies. She walked unsteadily down the garden path, a vegetable knife clutched in one hand, a small wicker basket in the other. Mr Spencer was due tomorrow; she decided he could spend his time hoeing and weeding the vegetable patch - it was getting like a miniature jungle. And he was not going to be allowed to use paraquat on the paths. He was as bad as those farmers wanting to take the easy way out.

The lettuces were not as big as she had thought. Never mind, she would take a couple. And that cabbage, now where was it, she had spotted it yesterday. Ah yes, trying to hide in a patch of groundsel and willow herb. It looked a bit scruffy, as though the bugs had had a good go at it overnight. Those caterpillars, probably.

Martha felt exceptionally tired today, and found herself promising herself another little rest after tea. Now that wouldn't do at all. There were jobs to be done. ‘Think young, keep young’ was her motto. She would clean the windows after tea, wipe all that filthy fly-dirt off the panes.

Back in the kitchen, she placed her vegetables on the draining board. That cabbage looked hardly fit to eat, she thought; once the outer leaves were removed, however, it might be all right. She plucked off the scruffiest leaves and sank the blade of the knife deep into the crisp heart.

And at that moment the cabbage seemed to erupt into life. It became a mass of crawling, darting, wriggling angry little creatures, elongated bodies that twisted and weaved, scuttled and bunched together. Living revulsion - dozens of insects that were instantly recognizable even though they were several times their normal size as they spilled out of the partly sliced cabbage.

Earwigs!

Martha Vickers dropped the knife. She heard it clatter and skate across the floor, then rebound off the refrigerator surround. She threw up her hands in horror, and saw that the oversize earwigs had already boarded their human prey, squirming over her fingers, running down her bare arms, stinging or biting - she didn't know which, didn't care, as she gasped with pain at the staccato hypodermic needle-like jabs. Instinctively swatting at them, at herself, she slapped their hard shell-like bodies, but they were neither dislodged nor squashed. She felt them digging in with their sharp little feet to secure a hold, armour-plated creatures that were impervious to blows from a frail old lady.

She panicked. They streamed down her arms; a couple jumped and landed on her neck, wriggled and bit her. She struck at them, dislodged some more from her hands, and felt them tumbling inside the neckline of her summer dress. Oh, God! Tearing buttons off, delving inside her clothing, she tried to reach her attackers. I can't bear even to touch earwigs but I've got to get them out. There was a crawling sensation on her shrunken breasts, then stabbing pains. She ripped at her bra and pulled it free.

Even as she bent over she saw them on the floor, masses of them, squiggly bodies that were three, maybe four, inches long, coming at her from all directions. She trod on one and heard its brittle body crunch on the rubber tiles, then she cried out at the pain in her foot. They were swarming all over her shoes, on to her bare ankles, climbing up her legs.

Martha struck at them blindly. She sent two tumbling back, but there were five or six already beneath the hem of her skirt and travelling upwards, fast. Swiftly she closed her thighs and pressed them tightly together.

‘No, not there! Oh, my God!’

They were all over her, biting and wriggling on every part of her body. She opened her mouth to scream, and in an instant they were pouring in between her lips, horrible vicious creatures bent on gaining entry to her body by any orifice available to them. She heaved, then felt them going over the back of her tongue, descending into her throat. Her teeth clenched, biting on something that squelched and stung her gums.

They swarmed all over her face, clustered on her eyes, obscured her vision. She slapped wildly at them, dislodging a few, but others quickly took their place and shut out the daylight. Oh, dear God, I'm blind!

Something jolted her memory in the midst of her terror, something her father once told her when she was a small child, a stupid ridiculous thing to say to any infant, but suddenly it was awesome reality. ‘You keep clear of earwigs, Martha, because if they get in your ears they can crawl right through to your brain and send you mad!’

Nonsense, she thought now. They couldn't get past the ear drum, it was a physical impossibility. Yes they can, they're doing it now - they're on my brain! And I am going mad.

She reeled back against the table, and miraculously remained upright; she tried to spit the clusters of earwigs out of her mouth but only succeeded in letting more in. She attempted to hook them out of her ears, but they seemed to have penetrated too deeply. She dragged one out by its body, suffered a spate of bites on her fingers before she managed to fling it away.

She clutched at her crotch through her dress, knowing that her tightly closed thighs had not been a sufficient barrier to keep these horrors out. An awful sense of realization had her doubling up: They were right inside her, scurrying frantically on an exploration of her womb!

She was filled with madness and terror, blinded, choking. She had tried to throw up, but the scalding vomit got no further than her throat. Suffocating, her nostrils jammed by a living blockage, she could feel the creatures forcing their way through the sinus, going down into her throat, choking her.

She had to get help. With a supreme effort she forced her body forward, one frail foot in front of the other, tottering, arms outstretched. She could not see at all, had lost all sense of direction, was groping blindly round the room trying to find the door.

She knocked against something; it fell and shattered. A sharp pain in her right foot, then a sudden liquid warmth spread over her toes, making the tiled floor slippery. She knew she had cut herself, maybe badly, but right now that was the least of her worries.

Sobbing, she banged into inanimate objects that refused to budge: the sink, the washing machine. And all the time it felt as though her intestines were on fire, a living stinging inferno that spread up from her womb.

She found the door, tottered outside, thought she was screaming but could not be sure because she was deaf as well as blind. They were eating her, devouring her flesh from within, feasting on her intestines even whilst she still lived. Pain; her bowels emptied, scalding urine poured down the insides of her legs. And then her foot caught against something. She felt a toe crack; in any other situation the agony would have been excruciating, but now it was no more than an inconvenience, an incidental.

She thought she was falling - a sensation as though a huge bottomless abyss yawned beneath her and she would float in it for evermore. Pleasant in a way, a sudden respite from this experience of nauseating horror.

Martha was suspended in mid-air, nowhere in particular, just drifting. The earwigs had been just a nightmare and now it was all over. She could forget them and eventually she would wake up in the big comfy armchair and in due course go out and potter round the garden.

And then everything went black, a total cessation of mental and physical agony. She did not even feel the impact of her head meeting with solid concrete and the frail skull cracking.

It was Mr Spencer, the jobbing gardener, who found her. He was due to put in half a day's work in the scorched up garden the following day, but at seventy-five he was beginning to feel the heat and had decided to work evenings until the heatwave broke. It surely could not go on forever.

This evening he was going to spray some paraquat on those overgrown paths, he had made up his mind on that. He didn't object to a bit of steady work, but hand-weeding paths was a waste of his time, made his back ache, and cost the customer too much money. Damn it, he thought, he could clear all those paths in half-an-hour with a watering can.

Martha had been a bit funny about weedkillers lately, though. Like one or two of his other clients. They had been listening to and reading all the propaganda that fellow up at the Dingle was spreading. Silly bugger! They were masochists who just wanted to make life hard for themselves, enjoyed being obstinate for the sake of it. A fad that would soon pass, Hubert Spencer decided. Another few months and everybody in the village would have got tired of all this fuss.

He had been gardening for over half a century and he wasn't going back to the old days for anybody. Life could be so much easier if you relied on a few modern products.

He would have to use a bit of cunning as far as Martha Vickers was concerned, though. He thought about spraying the paths and then telling her afterwards; he'd have to if he was going to get reimbursed for the sachets of paraquat. The trouble was she might blow her top and sack him, and the extra money came in handy on top of his old-age pension. And he knew only too well what the answer would be if he told her beforehand.

A sudden idea, a bit of harmless deceit: he'd bought some stuff to kill the aphids and pray God she didn't ask to see the packet. Provided she wasn't standing in the window watching him she would have no idea whether he had used it on the paths or the roses and the vegetables. Of course, the greenfly and blackfly would still be there at the end of the week. Damned stuff couldn't have been any good, I'll say. I'll see if I can get some derris powder next time I go into town.

Then she'll say that the weeds on the paths all seem to have shrivelled up and died, Mr Spencer. And I'll tell her, it's the drought, ma'am, doing us a favour. It's an ill wind, you know. Not really dishonest, just using a bit of tact to get a job done, he thought. All the same he felt guilty about it and the gnarled fingers that lifted the catch on the wrought-iron front gate shook slightly. He hoped she would stay indoors tonight, and leave him to get on in peace …

That was when he saw Martha Vickers. She was sprawled headlong across the flagged patio outside the back door, her body twisted at a grotesque angle.

The ageing gardener stood and stared in horror. He could tell from here that she was dead; her head covered in blood that was fast drying in the warm evening sun, turned towards him, her dead eyes fixed unwaveringly on him, her mouth half-open, mutely reprimanding him. Good evening, Mr Spencer, I know full well what you're planning to do this evening. That's paraquat in your pocket, isn't it? Well, you use that and you'll end up like me, dead. You see if I'm not right.

Hubert Spencer just trembled, shaking in every limb as though he had a sudden attack of the ague. It was only too clear what had happened: the old dear had caught her foot in that loose paving slab, the one she had asked him to re-lay and concrete, only the bag of cement in the garage had gone solid and unusable. She had fallen forward, hit her head on that … Hubert had always regarded the stone garden gnome as an eyesore, a monstrosity that was out of place in this neat little garden. The thing was like a misshapen dwarf, the kind sadistic Victorian artists used to draw in children's fairy tale books designed to frighten the kids and give them nightmares. Horrible! A gremlin, a murderer, its evil Punch-like features splattered with the blood of its victim.

Spencer backed off a step, moving his gaze from the garden gnome's gargoyle features back to Martha's. She was looking at him, seeing him, even though she was dead, he fancied. And she knew about the paraquat all right.

I'm sorry, ma'am, it was wrong of me, I just thought it would make it easier for us both, if you see what I mean. I mean, it isn't really like those sprays that the farmers use, them that comes floatin' in the air across the village. It just kills the weeds, does a useful job. Oh, I know it 'as been known to kill folks, them that've drunk it, but only an idiot would drink weedkiller, wouldn't they? Or you can blame the bloody fools who mix it up in a pop bottle and leave it lyin' around. But I wouldn't've done anythin' like that, I promise. Straight in the watering can and on to the path, and I'd've washed the can out afterwards. On me honour, ma'am.

She didn't believe him and she wouldn't forgive him, not even in death, he thought. He swallowed, backing out through the gate and into the main street. ‘And don't forget to shut the front gate as you go, Mr Spencer.’ She always told him that, never failed.

Yes, ma'am. He clicked the latch shut and turned away in a stupor. Somebody was coming down the road, a man with a dog on a leash, the animal squatting to do its business on the verge.

‘Oi!’ Hubert Spencer's cry was a constricted whisper, a hoarse bleat of fear. ‘Mr Harrison, sir. I … I think Mrs Vickers 'as gone and died. P'raps you'd just 'ave a look.’

Doctor Barnett verified that Martha Vickers had been suffering from heart trouble and her sudden death was not altogether unexpected. She had probably been dead before she cracked her skull on that garden ornament.

Some nasty insect bites on her face, but he gave them no more than a cursory glance. There were a lot of nasty biting beasties about in this hot weather, just as there had been in 1976.

He did not consider them relevant to her death and certainly they did not warrant a mention on the death certificate.

3

Franklin Roeder had built up Roeder Agrochemicals Limited from a workbench and some basic equipment in a semi-detached house in the Midlands twenty years ago. It was an obsession that had become a driving ambition during evenings and weekends. Promotion in industrial chemistry was slow and horticultural insecticides were limited. The layman, the gardening hobbyist, had to be treated as an incompetent fool; you didn't give him anything really dangerous and you could con him up to a point. But there was no real scope for revolutionary garden pesticides within the confines of suburbia. The real scope lay in agriculture.

Farmers were different, they were shrewd businessmen and you couldn't con them. So you gave them what they wanted, and as long as it did the job, enabled them to make an extra bob or two, they would keep on buying the product. Except that everybody was leaping on to the bandwagon and it became a price war rather than a war related just to chemicals and their results. You brought out a new, more efficient weedkiller, and within a year the same product was being imported at a third of the cost of your own. In the long term you were flogging a dead horse.

Standard pesticides had little future, Roeder had decided long ago; what you had to do was to produce one that was more efficient than anything else on the market. To hell with the price, if it did what the farmer wanted it to do, and he couldn't get it anywhere else, then he'd buy it from you. In due course your rivals would analyse it and the price war would begin again, so you had to make your pile way ahead of anybody else. Which was what he planned to do with DD7.

It had taken seven years to perfect. He had taken the principle of the common lawn weedkiller as a guideline. It worked through the foliage of the weed, promoting a rapid and exaggerated growth so that the plant outgrew itself, wilted and died. Now if that idea could be made to work on insects there was a fortune to be made.

The first two years had been a string of depressing failures, except that Roeder did not accept failure. It was all part of an elimination process - find out first what the formula will not kill and regulate it accordingly.

Rodents were immune to it, and that was a good guide to acceptance by ADAS. If rats didn't suffer any harm, then humans wouldn't either. Amphibians were receptive, except that the larger ones took an awful long time to grow and die. A frog in the lab had swelled to the size of a rat before it burst its slimy skin, but that had taken four months. Insects took about a week, depending upon size and species. Spring and early summer spraying were most effective of all, he found.

DD7 was indiscriminate, and Donald Phelps, Roeder's chief chemist, did not have any hopes of making it otherwise. OK, it killed off all insect life in a designated area, but so what? The farmer got rid of the pest he was spraying for, so he would be happy. And he was the one who was going to pay the money.

Roeder Agrochemicals had sprayed their permitted trial area in April and at regular intervals up until June. By August they knew the extent of their successes. And, judging by the fuss the villagers of Pen-y-Cwm were kicking up, DD7's failures, its side-effects, would soon be known too.

Roeder stubbed out a cigarette and flicked over the pages of a loose-leaf file on the desk in front of him. The print was a blur before his eyes, but he knew it off by heart, anyway. But if this information was leaked in the next few weeks one of two things would happen. DD7 would either be banned or else some foreign competitor would hit the UK market with it way before Roeders ever got round to producing it in bulk. And Holden, the student chemist working alongside Phelps, was the weak link without a doubt.

Roeder looked up and scowled. He had a permanent air of arrogance. His head was out of proportion to the rest of his body, a large sphere clumsily balanced on narrow shoulders, with thinning hair and a moustache that marked him as an ex-military man. He did his best to conceal a pot belly behind the tight-fitting waistband of an expensively tailored pair of tweed trousers. A difficult man at all levels, ruthless in the extreme.

He took his time lighting a second cigarette – all part of an act to put both Phelps and Holden at a disadvantage. They were easy meat; he could pull them apart at his leisure, and he was in no hurry.

He finished skimming the pages, closed the loose-leaf file and looked up, letting his pale blue eyes focus on the other two. Holden swallowed, showing his nervousness. An upstart, Roeder thought, getting too big for his boots, thinks he's going to rattleme. He noted the younger man's sallow complexion, the physical frailty of the slight figure, the hunched shoulders. At twenty-three John Holden had sacrificed most of the pleasures enjoyed by other young men for a career devoted to the chemical analysis of other people's work. A research chemist looked for flaws, side effects, a critical dissection of a product. And Franklin Roeder detested criticism.

‘Well?’ Roeder's voice was low, a challenge to the man opposite him. ‘What have you got to say about this?’

‘Everything that's in my report.’

‘I've read it. It's a load of crap.’

‘It's fact.’ A slight quaver of the voice, a hint of the lower lip trembling. Standing up to Roeder was an awesome task, even with government backing. ‘DD7 is a disaster, a dangerous experiment that will undoubtedly have a devastating effect on the environment if it is widely used.’

Donald Phelps shifted uneasily in his chair, crossed one leg over the other and cleared his throat. Holden was right; they had checked out the final analysis together. But they both knew that the boss would not accept their findings.

‘The insects outgrow themselves and die.’ Franklin Roeder leaned forward across the desk. ‘Is that any different from direct poisoning in the long run? Does it matter a shit how they die, so long as they do?’

‘A lot of them haven't died, though.’ Holden steadied his voice and did his best to meet Roeder's gaze. Facts were facts, and even Roeder couldn't sidestep them. ‘You take a look in the lab …’

‘I already have, and I'm more than satisfied with what I've seen in the experimental cages. Aphids as big as ants, ants the size of your thumbnail, grasshoppers like locusts. Which is what we wanted to achieve.’

‘But they're not dying,’ the student chemist snapped. ‘A lot of them are still growing!’

‘There are dead ones lying in the bottom of the cages.’

‘A few. Proportionally a very small minority to the living. I've tested the live ones and they show no signs of having outgrown their bodies; they're strong and healthy. And, God, how much bigger are they going to grow?’

‘Not much,’ Roeder grunted. ‘They'll die very shortly. I think maybe an analytical look at DD7 will solve these minor problems. The growth accelerator can be speeded up. Their progress has been too gradual and allowed the insects to adapt. You can be working on that, Holden.’

‘That isn't all, as you'll know if you've read the report thoroughly.’ A veiled reprimand, the challenge thrown back.

‘What else, then?’

‘Amphibians, cold-blooded life, are affected too.’ There was a hint of anger, revulsion in John Holden's voice. He ruffled his fingers through his hair, a habit of his when he was agitated. ‘DD7 doesn't just kill insects, it will clear every frog, toad, lizard, slug, you name it, on every acre that is sprayed, and the drift will account for a lot more beyond that.’

‘Then it'll have to be sprayed in large globules to cut out the spray drift.’

‘No. It's a threat to the environment. It'll never be passed.’

‘Not on your recommendation, it won't, Holden. Which is why you have to rewrite this report.’

‘It'll be discovered in testing, whether I rewrite it or not.’

‘I think not.’ Roeder drew hard on his cigarette and narrowed his eyes. ‘One could say the same about paraquat-based sprays. Hares and rabbits that graze within a few hours of spraying die. At least, that's the theory, but it still isn't actually proved. And even if it is, do you really think these herbicides are going to be withdrawn? Of course they aren't. The bloody public and the nature societies will bleat and get up petitions, but they'll be wasting their time. There's too much capital investment at stake to ban spraying, even the brands which we accept are dangerous. Depending, of course, on your priorities, and the priority of this company is to market a pesticide which will totally destroy pests harmful to agriculture. And DD7 is the ultimate of years of experimentation in the field.’

Holden's stomach had knotted. His mouth was dry, it was difficult to swallow. He felt sick. This was the brick wall he had anticipated running into; you did your job thoroughly, faultlessly, and ended up with a bollocking. The ultimatum was there. Rewrite your DD7 analytical report or else.

Donald Phelps was staring down at the floor. A tall man with iron-grey hair, he was fifty-eight next birthday. Just a few years off retirement. He knew better than to stick his neck out over issues at this stage of his career. OK, he felt sorry for the reptiles, even if cold-blooded creatures did give him the shudders, but what the hell did it matter if frogs and lizards died? Certainly not worth risking a pension for.

A tense silence. Roeder was waiting for Holden to say, ‘Yes, sir, of course. I'll rewrite the report and I'll also see what can be done about speeding up the growth accelerator of DD7.’ But John Holden said nothing. It was up to Roeder to throw down the final gauntlet.

‘Well?’ Roeder was a silhouette behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, a repulsive creature of prey waiting to pounce.

‘The report contains my findings in every detail.’

‘You're only a student chemist, and students have a habit of making incredible balls-ups.’

‘I've checked and rechecked. So has Mr Phelps.’

Roeder's gaze switched to the Chief Research Chemist. Phelps crossed his legs over again and cleared his throat.

‘And what have you got to say about it, Phelps?’ Roeder's stare implied clearly, And don't forget you're eligible for a pension from Roeder Agrochemicals in two or three years. Or can you manage on your state pension? Maybe you've been frugal, salted a bit away?

‘Basically it's correct, Mr Roeder.’ Phelps' words came out in a rush like a schoolboy trapped into an admission of his guilt. ‘The insects aren't dying as quickly as we had hoped they would. That can be rectified. It isn't out of the question. We will see if the accelerator can be increased.’

‘Good. But don't waste too much time on it. Then Holden can rewrite his report.’

‘No!’ A cry that echoed an inner anguish came from the student. ‘I can only write facts, I won't distort them.’

Another prolonged silence during which the tobacco smoke around Roeder seemed to grow thicker, portraying him to the other two as an angry ogre debating the fate of his captives, as his pale blue merciless eyes bored through the haze.

‘We'll get round it … somehow,’ Phelps blustered, wringing his hands together.

‘I won't be party to a deception.’ Holden called on every vestige of courage he could muster. ‘Not of this nature. It's immoral.’

‘You're a bloody idealist.’ Roeder's voice snaked a whiplash across the room. ‘You're like this berk Earnshaw down the road, wasting your time on ecological factors and missing the whole point. Our job is to assist agriculture in feeding a starving world population.’

‘And lining your own pockets whilst whole countries starve and the fortunate sit on a mountain of surplus food.’

‘Shut up!’

Holden shut up. There were a lot of other things he wanted to say, but suddenly Roeder's personality overshadowed him, making him think subconsciously that this was how Hitler had swayed millions. If you put your case over right, everybody thought it was right. Maybe Franklin Roeder was right.

‘You've got a choice.’ Roeder's voice was quiet again, more menacing than before. ‘You either rewrite that report or you go from here, and I'll tell you this, boy – if that happens you'll never ever get another job in the chemical industry. I can promise you that. And don't get any ideas about leaking anything, because there are qualified chemists in this place who will reduce your misguided theories to emotive balderdash. Get it?’

John Holden got it. In those few seconds his principles crumbled, disintegrated. He knew he was beaten. He just sat there, found himself nodding and despised himself for it.

‘Right, that's settled.’ The cloud of cigarette smoke seemed to drift away from Roeder as though in some way he had commanded it to unveil him. Perfectly manicured fingers pushed the report file across the desk. ‘I think, then, we can say at this stage that DD7 is an unqualified success. The report just has to be … completed and we should, with luck, have ADAS approval by the autumn. Please remain behind, Phelps. I'd like a word with you.’ And you can fuck off Holden, and do as you re told, he added silently.

Donald Phelps was sweating as the door closed behind John Holden. The Chief Research Chemist had just witnessed the total annihilation of one of the most brilliant students he had come across in years. The report had been ingenious, throwing up a number of pitfalls which even he had not spotted. And now it was all destroyed; yet another pesticide, possibly the deadliest formula ever to be thrust upon the world, would be submitted for approval. He prayed that it would fall at the last hurdle, but Roeder was diabolically clever, a master of cover-ups. Maybe its faults would not be found until it was too late, until insects and other creatures had mutated beyond the wildest nightmares of the country's top scientists. Until the environment was ravaged. He dared not think about it. He was not a religious man, but suddenly he was offering up a prayer to a God whom he had almost forgotten.

‘He's dangerous.’ Roeder spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Idealists are always dangerous and there is no room for them in agrochemicals. It might be unwise to sack him, but he'll have to be watched very carefully. And that's your job, Phelps.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Maybe some drunken motorist will oblige us and run him over.’ Roeder laughed, an unpleasant sound that had the sweat on the chief chemist's brow chilling suddenly. ‘We don't want any slip-ups at this stage.’

‘I hear that the villagers are getting up another petition.’ Phelps swallowed. Perhaps this wasn't the best time to mention it. He should have let Roeder find out for himself.

‘It's a fashion getting up petitions,’ Roeder replied. ‘I think the authorities became impervious to them long ago. It beats me why they allow all these protest marches over every conceivable thing every weekend. They wouldn't stand for them in the eastern bloc countries. The troops would disperse them in a matter of minutes. That's how it'll be here one day too, Phelps. And for me that day can't come quick enough. The bloody people aren't intelligent enough to know what's good for them, that's the whole root of the matter. They persistently bite the hand that feeds them, and in the end they'll just have to have everything forced on them, you mark my words.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Phelps said meekly and turned towards the door. ‘I'll keep an eye on Holden, sir.’

There are times in a man's life when he despises himself. And for Donald Phelps this was one of them.

4

Emma Earnshaw had not been to school for two days. She didn't exactly feel ill, just listless. And tense. She dreaded nightfall because that was when the frog came back to her and haunted her subconscious, and if she closed her eyes she could see it in every detail. Bloated and evil, its bulging eyes fixed on her, belly-flopping along in her direction. I'm going to catch you and eat you, little girl. I'm big enough, you can see that.

So long as she stayed indoors she was safe, she told herself. Silly fears like the ones she had had when she was very young returned; she checked the toilet very carefully before she sat on the seat, just to make sure that that frog had not squeezed up the waste pipe and was lurking in the bowl. She looked underneath the bed, and crept out of bed to close her bedroom window in spite of the stuffiness, after her mother had said goodnight and gone back downstairs.

Of course she dreamed about the creature, horrible nightmares she knew would recur for a long time in spite of the fact that Daddy swore there were no frogs in the big pond. If that was the case, then where were they? That was the worrying part – they might be anywhere. She knew there was more than just one frog, sensed it.

‘Can I go to school tomorrow, Mummy?’ A hopeful question, showing her eagerness to escape the boredom of staying at home indoors on yet another sweltering day.

‘We'll see how you are in the morning.’ It was the usual non-committal reply whenever Emma had been away from school.

‘I'm not ill, Mummy, really I'm not.’

‘No, I don't think you're actually ill,’ Diane scrutinized her daughter across the table. ‘You're just … just overwrought. You had a nasty experience.’

‘I'm OK now. You do believe me about the frog, don't you?’ Emma's eyes were wide, pleading. ‘It was real, I promise.’

‘Yes, I believe you.’ Diane was tight-lipped. For once she could not say, You imagined it. ‘After what we've seen since, I'd believe just about anything. There are huge greenfly and blackfly devastating the beans, ants like soldier ants from South America, and earwigs, ugh!’

‘It's the sprays, isn't it, Mummy?’

‘Yes, dear, it's the chemicals they're polluting the environment with that have done this. Daddy phoned Mr Johnson at the NFU office about it this morning. He said it was irrational to blame it on spraying. He said it was the freak weather that was doing it, creating tropical conditions so that the insects grew like their oversize relatives in tropical countries. We didn't expect him to say anything else. After all, it's his job to support the farmers.’

‘You don't want me to go out because of all these beasties, do you?’ Emma asked.

‘No, I don't. I don't really think they'll hurt you.’ God, she thought, how unconvincing she sounded. ‘It's just that they're so revolting.’

‘What's … what's going to happen? How will we get rid of them?’

‘I … don't know.’

‘Daddy will do something, he'll kill them, won't he?’

Diane pursed her lips. ‘Daddy is doing everything possible, darling. He's going to phone the pest officer at the Ministry of Agriculture tomorrow – though, Lord knows, somebody in Pen-y-Cwm has surely done that already. Then the pest people will come and …’

‘And spray them?’

‘I don't know. Maybe they'll have a better idea, although for the life of me I can't think what.’

‘Daddy won't let them spray on the Dingle, will he? He always said “over my dead body there will be spraying here”.’

‘Daddy will think of something. Now, don't you worry any more about it. You go on upstairs, it's nearly bedtime. And I think you'd better have a bath.’

‘And I can go to school in the morning, can't I, Mummy?’

‘Provided you're all right. You get a good night's sleep and don't think about frogs or any other creatures. Just leave them to Daddy and the pest officer.’

Emma could not stop herself from thinking about the frog. She tried to switch her thoughts to other things but always they came back to frogs. And in the background she heard the awful screeching buzzing sound that the enraged grasshoppers made. Perhaps it was just her ears ringing the way they always did when she had a cold. Except that she did not have a cold. And after her mother had come into her room and kissed her, Emma crept out of bed and closed the window. Even then she could hear the insects outside, a steady buzz of late evening activity; not just grasshoppers, but bees and flies, and a heavy-winged moth was fluttering against the pane trying to get in. It looked exceptionally large and she pulled the sheet up over her head.

Some time later she heard the frogs. Their croaking hung in the sultry atmosphere, a sinister sound like the beat of distant jungle drums getting louder all the time. And louder.

It was just another nightmare coming on. It couldn't be, though, because she wasn't asleep. At least, she didn't think she was. She sat up. It was dark except for a silvery glow coming through the closed curtains. Moonlight. She remembered the moon was full.

The bedroom door was closed; she had refused to let her mother leave it open any longer. Emma thought about calling her parents, but if she did that and it was only a dream then they wouldn't let her go to school tomorrow. She had to find out if it really was frogs or if she was imagining it, and there was only one way to do that. She hesitated, wondering if she dared get out of bed and go to the window and take a peep.

She sat there listening to them, a kind of baying chorus growing in volume as though more and more frogs were gathering somewhere, a malignant reptilian army. Waiting.

She was trembling. With an effort she swung her feet to the floor; her legs were so weak she could hardly stand. She didn't want to go to the window, didn't want to see whatever was outside. But she had to look because she didn't want to call her parents.

Unsteadily she crossed to the window and stood there clasping the hem of the curtains with her sweaty fingers. One thing was now certain, this was no dream and that made it all the more frightening. The noise came up at her from somewhere down below, a deep booming sound, vibrant and angry. If the grasshoppers were there, then the frogs were drowning the noise of those spindly sawing legs.

Emma parted the curtains an inch or so. Straight ahead of her, way beyond the roofs of the farm buildings, the silver orb of the full moon was set in a dark velvet sky, its light illuminating the whole countryside. She could see the peaks of the distant mountains enshrouded in the ethereal glow, which gave them the appearance of being covered by a dusting of frosty snow. So beautiful, so eerie.

The booming was louder, as though the frogs sensed her presence, knew she was at the window. Look down, little girl, and you will see us.

She lowered her eyes and stood on the balls of her feet to enable her to see down into the yard below, a patchwork of silver and darkness where the moonlight created its own shadows. Another world where monsters lived, where …

Emma started as she saw them, clutched at the curtains and gasped her fear aloud. Squat shapes massed in a triangle of moonshine, bloated creatures the size of fully grown rats, shunning the surrounding shadows because they were intent on being seen. Uplifted heads, mouths opening and closing, bulging eyes glinting with the reflection of the moon, making their sinister serenade in time with the pulsing of their vile slimy bodies.

She stood transfixed, revolted, and found herself trying to count them. It was not easy the way they were bunched, their own shadows creating the impression that there were still more of them. Ten, twenty …

Little girl, come out to play,

The moon doth shine as bright as day.

They wanted her to join them, she knew that, to steal silently down the stairs and creep out into the yard. She almost did; her heart was thudding, her mouth was dry, and for one terrible split second she nearly obeyed their call.

Instead she screamed. And screamed again.

The landing light was on, her own bedroom was flooded with harsh electric light and her mother was pulling her away from the window. Diane was fully naked as before; Les had the same pair of briefs on – perhaps he slept in them.

‘Emma, what is it? You're sleep-walking.’ Diane pulled the child to her but Emma was pointing back towards the window.

‘Look. Look out there, Daddy.’

‘Jesus Christ alive!’ Les stood with the curtains parted, stared down into the farmyard below, his body rigid, his muscles beginning to tremble. ‘So they do exist after all. My God, I'll fix the bastards!’

‘Les, don't go outside …’

But Les was already running for the stairs, taking them two at a time until his bare feet were thudding on the hall floor. Anger, foremost, a burning hatred for those reptiles that had no right to exist on the Dingle or anywhere else in Britain. Revulsion, too. And in amongst all his emotions ran a thin vein of fear that would only manifest itself later. Right now he had a job to do, a mission of revenge: he would destroy the monstrosities, savouring the task, pulp each and every one of the frogs to a slimy mulch. He didn't know whether frogs squealed with pain and fear, but if they did then their cries would be sweet music in his ears.

The door was stuck, it always was difficult to open. He grasped the handle, exerted all his strength and used his foot as a lever on the jamb. The woodwork groaned, then scraped on the uneven floorboards as the warped door suddenly flew open, catapulting him backwards.

Rushing into the porch, he paused as a sudden thought struck him. He would need a weapon of some kind to smash the life out of those creatures. There was a log-splitter somewhere, a finely balanced Earthworks tool with a heavy head. Ideal. Oh, Christ, where the hell was it?

He scrabbled amidst a pile of jumble, waterproof clothing that had been thrown down after last winter's final downpour and never hung up. Wellington boots, an old spin-drier that he was determined to find some use for, the remnants of Emma's doll's house that he had been intending to break up for kindling when they needed to light the wood stove again.

Then he found the axe, dragged it out by its stail, held it in both hands and felt his fury fanned to a peak just by the feel of it. Right, you fuckers, here I come. Prepare to die!

The moonlight did not seem so bright now that he was outside. The shadows had moved in, patches of blackness that were deliberately hiding the enemy. Les stood and looked around him, waiting for his eyesight to adjust to the gloom, his naked torso heaving, his heart banging like a stoked-up steam engine. He was dimly aware that he was sweating; he smelled his own body odours and felt his perspiration chilling in the cool of the night atmosphere. Where are you, you buggers? Come on, you can't escape me!

There was no sign of the frogs, no heaving amphibian shapes, no glowing eyes in the surrounding shadows. No unholy croaking. Just the sound of grasshoppers coming from the orchard, and now they sounded quite normal, insignificant. Even tranquil.

He moved into the shadows, stepping cautiously with his bare feet, his body bent forward as he peered. Suppose he trod on one of them by accident; his subconscious conjured up a sensation of cold slime, a body bursting like a balloon half-filled with water, squelching all over him. Jesus!

Searching, straining his eyes, with a roaring in his ears like a distant waterfall, despair began to cool his fury. They're gone, you won't find them, you may as well go back to bed because you're wasting your time. Maybe they never existed, maybe they were an illusion, the kind Emma had down by the big pond. Yet he felt their presence, a kind of scent that a hound picks up even though the quarry has already bolted.

He used the axe to poke amidst heaped rubbish – rusting farm machinery that was lying in the yard long before the Earnshaws bought Dingle Farm and empty plastic sacks that crackled and rustled. He should have brought a torch, but it was too late to go back for one now even if he could remember where it was.

Slowly, methodically, he completed a circuit of the yard, moving in and out of the shadows, cursing profanely beneath his breath. He had already accepted that he was not going to find the loathsome creatures he sought. Frustration gripped him; he wanted to wield the log-splitter, smash that pile of rotting boards, vent his fury on something, anything. But it would be futile.

Finally he stood there in the centre of the yard, moonbeams glistening on his naked flesh, knowing that Diane and Emma were watching him from up above, feeling himself a failure in their eyes. With an effort he looked up, discerned two pale faces framed in the bedroom window and read the fear in their expressions.

‘They've gone, Les,’ Diane's voice quavered. Eventually somebody had to state the obvious, to bring this farce to a conclusion.

Emma remained silent. Oh, God, how he felt for her, knowing what she must have gone through the other evening. It would take years to get an experience like that out of her system; she would not forget it to her dying day.

‘Yes.’ He leaned on the axe, looked down at the ground and thought to himself how bright the moonlight was now that those monstrosities were gone. ‘They're gone. If they ever existed.’

Now you're being bloody stupid. You saw them with your own eyes. Diane saw them. Emma saw them. It was no hallucination, no moonlit mirage.

‘You'd better come back inside, Les. You'll catch your death standing out there with nothing on.’

Thank you, Diane, else I might have stayed out here all night. He trudged wearily towards the doorway, realizing how a sent-off footballer felt on that long lonely trudge back to the tunnel. The hopelessness. The shame. Oh, Christ, the bleeders can only hop, they're too fat and overgrown to move fast. They can't have gone far, they must be hiding up somewhere.

But where? Where?

‘Mummy, I want to go to school tomorrow. Promise me I can go. Please.’

‘All right, darling, you can go if you really want to.’

The voices floated down the stairs to Les, making him grimace in the darkened hallway. Of course you can go to school tomorrow, Emma. It's the best place for you, in a nice safe classroom. Away from the nightmares of this place they called the Dingle.

As he mounted the stairs wearily Les Earnshaw vowed that on the morrow he would continue the search. He would take the shotgun and Robbie, the half-breed collie, and hunt out every corner, every patch of rough undergrowth on the farm. And beat it all out.

But it would be a waste of time, he knew that from the outset. He had to do it, all the same, because he owed it to Diane and Emma just to make sure that those nightmarish reptilian creatures had left the Dingle.

But even if he did not locate them, he knew that they would be back. Maybe not tomorrow or the next night, but some other night. The fear would still remain.

5

Alan Marsden was seventeen years of age, had just left public school and would be starting at Oxford in the autumn. Tall and lean, he did not enjoy good health; nothing serious, a succession of winter and summer colds, and he picked up any bug that was going the rounds with unerring certainty. His lanky frame had no stamina, no resistance to germs, and he blamed it all on his state of mind. I'm a big namby-pamby, he confessed to himself on his last term at Osborn College. A mummy's boy and a daddy's puppet.

Verbal bullying during his time at Osborn had undermined what little self-respect he had retained from prep school. It wasn't his fault that his mother wrote to him three times a week, came to see him every weekend and brought him loads of fattening tuck in the hope that he would put on weight. He had never been any good at sport, it didn't interest him in the slightest, and he compensated for this by gaining ten O levels and five A levels and a scholarship to Oxford. His parents were proud of him and blamed his delicate physique on too much studying; a few good long walks in the fresh air was what he needed, never mind these rough games like soccer and rugby.

His father still had a fixation with the outdated short-back-and-sides haircut and persuaded Alan that long hair, even down to his collar, was unsightly and slovenly. Alan went along with that for a bit of peace and quiet, eventually became impervious to the jibes of his school mates and after a time the subject of hair-styles became boring to the members of the upper sixth. So Alan's hair was cut short and it became accepted by all. The jokes were wearing thin.

He adhered to school rules to such an extent that even his housemaster became concerned at his ‘lack of spirit’. But it was difficult enough to maintain discipline amongst ‘normal’ boys without taking on the additional task of encouraging one particular boy to misbehave. So, like his haircut, Alan's impeccable behaviour became an accepted fact of school life. Every boarding school had its oddities and if Alan stepped out of the mould then they would only have to look round for some other eccentric to replace him.

Yet Alan's conscience was not as clear as everybody presumed. At thirteen he had heard about the delights of masturbation but agonizingly denied himself the pleasure until after his fourteenth birthday. He well remembered his mother's constant reminders during his prep school days not to touch himself ‘there’. He had been told that if you got into the habit of playing with your willy all sorts of nasty things would surely befall you. You would go blind for a start. And you would certainly go to hell when your time came.

But a lot of his schoolmates masturbated and there was nothing wrong with their eyesight. Some of them had been doing it for years! So one night temptation got the better of him and he allowed his fingers to stray on to that erection which had taunted him persistently for months. It did not take long, a few gentle rubs and he was writhing in uncontrollable ecstasy in his bed. Guilt flooded him but he knew he would do it again and again. But he would never admit to anybody that he played with himself.

There was something else that Alan would have indulged in had he only had the courage; as it was, the thought served to fire his early masturbation fantasies. On Sunday afternoons all the borders still in school were required to vacate the premises between 2.00 and 4.30. Healthy walks in the fresh air, such as his mother was always on about, were the rule. The town was out of bounds, they had to stick to the countryside. Bloody boring when you went there every week, he thought. Except for Rawlings and Jenkinson and sometimes Matheson. Alan was on reasonably friendly terms with Matheson, who had confided in him that on some Sundays the trio met up with three girls from the town in a wood about a mile outside the school boundary.

Matheson had gone on to relate in detail what took place. The girls had let the youths ‘have a feel up their skirts’ and it had been Jenky who eventually unzipped himself and got his whatsit out. They had all watched as the red-haired girl, Elaine, had rubbed it and made it shoot all over her fingers.

Then, last week, Jenky had turned up at the illicit gathering with a packet of French letters and, would you believe it, Elaine had actually let him screw her! It was true, they had all watched, and on Tuesday Jenky had come back from his weekly shopping trip into town with two packs of condoms which he had given to his two mates. And on Sunday they were all going to shag their respective girlfriends.

‘See.’ Mathy had opened his wallet and given Alan a brief glimpse of a slim Cellophane-wrapped packet. ‘Just in case you don't believe me. Why don't you come along, Mars? We can get word to the girls to bring another of their mates along and we can all fuck. Or are you going off on your usual solo walk to find a nice quiet wood on your own so that you can wank the afternoon away?’

‘It doesn't bother me in the slightest.’ Alan had turned away so that Mathy didn't see either his deep blush or the erection which was threatening to burst the zip of his grey flannels, and lied, ‘I never get the urge to do anything like that at all.’

Christ, the opportunity, had been handed to him on a plate and he had spurned it, and chosen to continue life as a secret abuser of his own body. And he never regretted it more than he did on the day when he left Osborn and returned to Pen-y-Cwm for the long vacation prior to going to Oxford.

Muriel Marsden had decided that her son needed a speedy introduction to upper-class social life. She had talked it over with Edward, her husband, and he had agreed. After all, John Willis-Morton's twenty-first birthday party was coming up in October. They had already had an invitation to include Alan.

‘And the poor boy can't even dance,’ she remarked in her usual shrill tones. ‘Just imagine, Edward, you, me and everybody else waltzing round the floor and poor Alan sitting out by himself. It isn't even as though he's going to prop the bar up and look manly. He'll just sit there looking sorry for himself and make fools of you and me.’

‘Well, what d'you suggest then, dear?’ Edward Marsden showered cigar ash all down his shirt front. He knew that his wife already had something in mind. Muriel was never short of ideas.

‘There's a new dancing school opened up in town.’ She fitted a cigarette into a long ivory holder, checked her scarlet fingernails before flicking her lighter, drew some smoke deep down into her lungs and expelled twin streams from her flared nostrils. ‘I've already investigated it and it appears to be quite respectable. The Watson girl goes there, and she would suit Alan all right if only he could be persuaded to look at girls. It'll do him good. Tuesdays and Fridays, and Mrs Winterton is very choosy about whom she accepts. And it's all good old-fashioned ballroom dancing, too.’

‘Fine by me,’ her husband grunted, and slid his gaze back down to the crumpled copy of the Financial Times on his knee. ‘So long as there aren't any rough girls from the town getting there. We don't want to start any nonsense, do we?’

‘We shan't.’ Muriel cracked her features into what she firmly believed to be a smile. ‘As I told you, Mrs Winterton is very choosy.’

Mrs Winterton was not particularly choosy about her dancing clients. So long as they paid their fiver a lesson she could not afford to turn them away, whoever they were. She was paying a hefty rent for the use of the large hall on two nights a week and she needed to fill it. Admittedly she advertised ‘High-Class Dancing Tuition’ but that referred to the dancing and not her clientele, and if people were misled by it that was due to their own misinterpretation.

It was at Mrs Winterton's dancing classes that Alan Marsden met Maggie Lane. Maggie came from one of the tougher areas of town but somehow she seemed to be able to afford a fiver for the lessons. Not bad-looking, she would have been fairly presentable if she had washed her hair more regularly; the mousey-coloured strands that tumbled down to her shoulders resembled a worn-out mop stood head uppermost in the corner of the cleaning cupboard. Slim, her features were spoiled by acne which looked like a case of roaring impetigo. Yet she showed a willingness to learn on the dance floor and Mrs Winterton could not think of any logical reason for dissuading the girl from attending weekly.

On Alan's second visit, Mrs Winterton paired him up with Maggie. Perhaps he would come out of his shell a bit with a less sophisticated partner, she thought. He really was a very shy boy.

Alan just let Maggie lead him round the floor and tried to keep himself from treading on her small feet. She certainly made life a lot easier for him and he was grateful to her for that. She smelled heavily of cheap perfume and it was beginning to make him heady after a time, doing other things to him as well. He wished she wouldn't hold him so close; no, he didn't mind that, just wished that his erection would ease up a bit. His partner had surely felt it prodding against her as she dragged him along in time with the music. He sweated with embarrassment, could smell BO and thought it was hers; she was that kind of girl. Funnily enough the mingled smell of sweat and cheap perfume had his arousement throbbing until he thought that maybe he was going to ejaculate.

‘What's your name?’ Her cheek brushed his own and stayed there, her lips only inches from his ear, and it seemed as though she was deliberately rubbing her thighs against his erection, gyrating on it. He was going to come in a minute, he couldn't stop himself.

‘Alan. Alan Marsden. I live at Pen-y-Cwm.’

‘Mine's Maggie.’ Her arm encircled him, pulled him close to her, her pouting lips seeking out his own. ‘I think you're nice, Alan.’

Their lips met and she began to push at him with her tongue, forcing an entry. He opened up, let her penetrate his mouth, thrust into him. The significance of her kiss was not lost on him and it was at that moment that he began to climax. He groaned with ecstasy, heavenly sensations robbing him momentarily of all shame and guilt, and ground his pubic bone against hers, her hot breath fanning his lust to a hitherto unsealed peak and then beginning to lower him gently back to reality. Embarrassed as he felt the sticky liquid warmth inside his trousers, he wondered if his semen had soaked through to her dress. He wanted to apologize, to dash from the room, to run all the way back to Pen-y-Cwm if there wasn't a bus handy. But she was still holding him tightly against her so that he could not possibly have fled.

‘You've come.’ She was giggling. She dropped a hand slyly down to his lower regions, her fingers going in search of his spent hardness.

‘I … I'm sorry … I didn't mean to … I …’

‘It was nice,’ she whispered, rubbing him sensuously.

The tape flicked over to a quickstep and they had to come apart. His feet were hopeless; he had lost the rhythm, anyway. Without Maggie's guidance he would have floundered and stood helplessly in the middle of the floor, obstructing other dancers. But she was a natural and guided him perfectly. It crossed his mind to wonder why she needed lessons.

She waited for the next waltz before she talked again, her mouth once more close to his ear. ‘Aren't you going to ask me out?’ she laughed.

He thought maybe it was some kind of a joke. ‘I …’ Thankfully his erection had subsided into a shameful flaccid state. ‘I can't. I don't have a car. I live out in Pen-y-Cwm.’

‘That's where the bugs are.’

‘I'm sorry?’

‘All the creepy-crawlies, so I read in the papers. Earwigs and things. I hate insects.’

‘I can't say I've noticed any. I've only just come home for the school holidays. I go to Oxford in October.’

‘A toff, eh? God, you must be bloody clever. I'll bet you live in a big house and your folks are snobs.’

Now that was nasty, he thought. It made him feel inferior, in a stupid sort of way. Damn it, she was still feeling him, rubbing him, and if he didn't watch it he would be getting another hard-on very soon. It brought back memories of his last term at Osborn, the offer he had refused and still fantasized about.

‘Well, aren't you going to ask me for a date then, Alan?’

He was starting to get aroused again. ‘I … I'd like to but …’

‘But you don't have a car, and you don't want to tell your folks because they wouldn't approve of me and they'd raise hell and cause a big family stink. But you'd like it if you took me out, Al, I can promise you that. I could come to Pen-y-Cwm on the bus, we could meet somewhere.’

‘All right.’ He blurted out his agreement breathlessly. ‘We could do that. By the bus stop at the bottom of the main street there's a stile with a footpath going down to a bit of a wood by the canal. You can't miss it, there's a public footpath sign right by it. I could meet you down there.’

‘Tomorrow evening, then. About seven, depending on when the bus gets there.’

He nodded, knowing only too well that he was destined to come again before this session of dancing lessons ended. And he hardly dared to think what might happen tomorrow down by the canal. One thing was certain, he wasn't going to get any sleep tonight.

Alan tried to hide his eagerness to get away from the house the following evening. He was afraid lest his mother might get suspicious; she was always urging him to go for walks in the fresh air. Christ, she might even decide she wanted to accompany him, he thought in alarm. Muriel Marsden was totally unpredictable.

‘You're actually going for a walk!’ Raised eyebrows, a supercilious grin on her heavily made-up features. ‘I don't believe it.’

‘I need some fresh air.’ That was certainly true.

‘Well you watch out for all those creepies. There's some pretty huge earwigs in the garden and I've seen the pest control van in the village today. Don't forget you're allergic to bee stings.’

‘I'll be careful.’

God, the relief of getting through the front gate was akin to escaping over the Berlin Wall, he thought. He was tense, trembling, and had to hold himself in check or else he would have broken into a run.

The church clock was striking seven as he came in sight of the village bus stop. There was nobody about; maybe the bus had already been and gone, or else it wasn't coming at all. Maggie wouldn't turn up, he decided, as he climbed the stile and followed the narrow footpath down towards the canal. It was all a cruel joke like last night had been, playing with him, literally, laughing to herself because she had made him shoot in his pants. The bitch! If she didn't come then he would go into the wood and … No, he wouldn't, he wasn't ever going to play with himself again. If his mother ever got to find out about it she would bloody kill him.

But Maggie Lane was there, all right. She was reclining on a scorched grassy bank, wearing the same off-white low-necked summer dress that she had worn at the dancing class, a stain on it that reminded him of those bedsheet marks in the dormitory at Osborn which everybody joked about and hoped the matron would not notice. Hair like many rats'-tails, make-up plastered thick over her face trying to hide her acne, grinning; Christ, she was a bloody slag. That realization brought on a very familiar feeling in his lower regions.

‘So Mummy let you come after all,’ she laughed, and patted the dry grass in an invitation for him to sit down beside her.

‘She thinks I've gone for a walk.’

‘Well you have, haven't you? Say, what's that noise?’

He cocked his head to one side. He had to force himself to concentrate, to listen. ‘I think it's frogs,’ he said at length. ‘Can't be sure, but there's bound to be loads of them in the reeds along the canal.’

She slipped a sweaty hand into his and squeezed softly. Al, I've been thinking about you most of the day. I really like you.’

‘Good.’ It sounded silly but he could not think of anything else to say. That perfume was even stronger than it had been last night, the BO too, he noticed. God, it was turning him on.

Maggie was going in search of his lips again, pushing him back on to the ground, half-kneeling, her small firm breasts rubbing on his chest. She was trembling violently. She reminded him of a rapacious she-beast in season, desperate to mate. She couldn't wait. He let her thrust her hot tongue into his mouth and explore him; he knew he was hers for the taking. A slut from town, he hadn't expected anything else, it was what he had come here for, a callow youth in search of experience.

‘You're the sort of chap I could spend the rest of my life with.’ She drew back, saliva stringing from her soft red lips. ‘And I'll bet you're a virgin.’

He blushed, not wanting to admit it, and was relieved that she did not press the question. Those frogs were kicking up one hell of a din and there seemed to be a lot of other insect activity in the bushes behind, he realized. Funny how you noticed unimportant things at a time like this. A kind of diversion.

‘I'll bet you'd like to see me naked.’ She smiled, half-embarrassed as though she was afraid of offending him. ‘Would you, Al?’

He closed his eyes, and thought for one moment that he was going to ejaculate in his pants again. This was how it had been with Mathy and Jenky and their birds in the wood last term. He had missed out on it then, he wasn't going to now.

‘Well, Al?’ Maggie undid the top button of her dress and exposed the top half of her naked breasts; he could see that she wasn't wearing a bra. ‘Do you want to look at me in the nude or don't you?’ Impatience, irritation.

‘Yes,’ he grunted, wanting to see her naked more than anything else in the world right now.

It was so fast he could scarcely believe his eyes. She flicked three more buttons undone, pulled her dress right up over her head and flung it to one side. He had been right, she wasn't wearing a bra; neither was she wearing a slip or pants. Nothing at all, even her flimsy shoes had been kicked off. She had intended to do this, had come suitably unclad to surprise him this way. Not for her the art of a demure stripper.

She knelt up over him, brazenly letting him feast his gaze on her. She obviously had not had a bath recently; there were two patches of grime on her soft white flesh, one below her navel, stretching down as far as the top of her fluffy dark pubic hair. His questing gaze followed it down, saw her thighs parting, opening wide, affording him an unrestricted view of the slit of moist pink flesh that disappeared into the mystery of her crotch. He had once seen a picture of a vulva in a pornographic magazine which Mathy had brought to school. Its complexity had both puzzled and excited him; now he saw it for real. Christ, he wished those bloody frogs would shut up, they were getting on his nerves.

‘Like it?’ Laughing, flaunting herself at him, raising herself up and pulling her lower lips apart with her fingers. Then lowering herself gently down again, moist fingers stretching out in search of the waistband of his cords, finding it. ‘Your turn now, Al. Come on, I want to have a look.’

He wanted her to see, hoisted his bottom up off the ground to enable her to tug his trousers down, pulling his pants with them, struggling to get his shirt off. Oh, God, she wanted to look and he wanted her to. She pulled his pumps off without even bothering to untie the laces, such was her eagerness for his total nudity.

A brief moment of inhibition engulfed him, and then he was beyond the barrier, sweating and trembling, wondering how long he could hold his orgasm back. He groaned softly as her fingers located his organ, then slid gently up and down it. Oh, Christ, the feeling was beyond comprehension, he had never managed to do anything like this to himself.

‘You are a virgin, aren't you?’ Her words were scarcely more than a whisper, barely audible over the croaking of the frogs and the buzzing of insects. This time she wanted an answer.

‘Yes.’ He gulped the way he sometimes did when his mother asked him a direct embarrassing question.

‘I'm not.’ She seemed to revel in her confession, almost boasting. ‘I've been with a lot of men. I once thought I was pregnant. The guy was married so I was nearly shitting myself until I came on. I've been shagged by a dozen, maybe more, different blokes. But I've never had it with a virgin. At least, I don't think so. And I can't wait.’

And I can't wait much longer either, he thought. If you don't stop rubbing me I'll come. But he could not bring himself to tell her that.

‘I'd like a baby.’ She was lifting herself up, crouching astride him, her face lifted skywards as though she was offering up a prayer to some god of fertility. ‘I want a baby more than anything else.’

A pang of fear shot through him and brought about a sudden checking of his escalating orgasm. Christ Almighty, Mum would go mad. Father would beat the living daylights out of him, he panicked. Jenky always used to buy French letters; he should have done the same. But there weren't any shops in Pen-y-Cwm that sold protectives, and even if there had been he would not have had the courage to go and ask for them. No, please, no!

It was too late, she was astride him, guiding his hardness up into that part of her body which was still a mystery to a virgin student; lowering herself, engulfing him totally, her pubics mingling with his own, bearing hard down on him as if to ensure that she had taken him in his entirety. Moving back and forth, gyrating, speeding up, her breathing becoming strangled gasps, she sobbed, her head tight back as though calling upon unknown gods with everything she could muster.

Alan felt himself starting to explode, a rush that weakened him, blinded him to logic, urged him to push up into the girl on top of him, not caring if he gave her the baby she craved. They were writhing, convulsing in passionate unity. Maggie now sunk down on top of him, her breasts crushed on his torso, her tongue demanding a simulation of that which was happening lower down.

Slowly their bodies relaxed, still joined, their flesh lathered in sweat. And Alan Marsden's brain began to reel, spinning crazily with the realization of what he had done. Was it too late, was there no way he could prevent this slag from being pregnant? he wondered. My folks'll kill me, but maybe they'll pay for an abortion. I can deny it, blame it on one of the other fellers who have screwed her. Or run away. Jesus fucking Christ, what have I done?

‘You aren't a virgin any more, Al.’ Maggie shifted her position just to make sure that he did not slip out of her. ‘I enjoyed that and I know you did, too. Let's rest a bit and perhaps you can manage it again before long.’

‘Are you …’ He swallowed. ‘Do you think you might be … pregnant?’

‘Worried?’ She laughed, but there was something meaningfully sinister in her tone. ‘I could well be, the time's right. I'll be keeping you informed.’

‘My parents would kill me.’ His voice trembled.

‘I doubt it.’ She nibbled at his ear. ‘They might get a bit upset, but there's not much they can do about it once the bun's in the oven and starting to cook. But I love you, Al, I promise. Even if I only met you last night, I know I love you. I'd've made you wear something if I didn't. Maybe we could get married. If we got a move on nobody would know for sure that you got me in the club beforehand.’

But I don't bloody well want to marry a bleeding slut. I don't want to marry anybody. His sweat had gone cold and he was starting to shiver. Those frogs were deafening, a constant chorus as though they had secretly witnessed the human copulation and were mocking him, ‘You've got her pregnant, Alan. Now you're in trouble. You'll have some explaining to do.’ And the grasshoppers were backing them up with a harsh, grating orchestration, an awful signature tune that he would hear in his fevered dreams and recall every detail of this night of foolishness.

He wanted to get dressed and go home, hide himself away in his room, pretend that he was ill. No, he dared not go home. It was already starting to get dark. His mother would be looking out for him, firing a salvo of direct questions at him as he stepped into the house. ‘You haven't been meeting girls, have you, Alan? We want you to find a nice girl, but not one of those common village wenches. I can tell you this, and your father will back me up, there's nobody in Pen-y-Cwm suitable for you. And we're certainly not going to be related to anybody local. She's not local, Mum, she's a tart from town. Oh, bloody hell!

Maggie rolled off him and went over on to her back, trying to get him up on top of her. She grinned at him in the deep dusk and he noticed for the first time that her breath smelled sour, almost making him heave.

‘Come on top of me and fuck me that way for a change, Al.’

His penis had gone limp, his sex drive had evaporated along with the daylight. But her grimy fingernails were digging deeply into his flesh; she had not finished with him yet. She was rubbing him hard, producing an uncomfortable, almost painful, sensation in her attempts to arouse him a second time. Come on, Al, fuck me just once more and make sure I'm pregnant. I probably am, anyway, so you've nothing to lose, she seemed to say.

Christ, he hated her, despised her for the way she was attempting to stuff his spent member into herself, intent on another penetration come hell or high water. I could kill you, you bitch, and leave your body here, or else drag it down to the canal and let them find your corpse in the mud.

The frogs' croaking was reaching a crescendo, as though somehow Alan's thought-waves had been transmitted to them and they understood. And hungered for human flesh.

And at that moment Maggie Lane began to scream.

Alan felt her body tauten and begin to writhe beneath him, her fingers delving in search of some place on her own body for a change. Panicking, becoming hysterical, dislodging him.

‘What's the matter? What is it?’ He tried to ascertain the cause of her pain as she rolled over, doubling up into a ball, plucking at her rounded buttocks.

‘Al, something's biting me, it's stuck on my arse. And my legs. Oh, God, help me!’

‘Keep still. Let me see.’ He was trembling, his fears multiplying by the second. Somebody might hear her screams and come to investigate, and find them both in the nude. It was probably mosquitoes swooping in on exposed human flesh. Or ants. Or … He pulled her fingers away, and could just make out a white blob, roughly the size and colour of a snail without its shell, clinging to her heaving bottom. A bulbous bloated thing, he couldn't be sure what it was. Ugh, revolting, but he had to pluck it off. His thumb and forefinger closed over it; it was hard and repulsive to his touch. He pulled, squeezed, and at that moment it burst, exploding into a mass of dark sticky fluid that splattered all over his fingers, and even in his moment of horror he could see that part of it was still buried in her buttock!

‘Oh, Christ! Bloody fucking hell!’ She reared up, threatened to snap her spinal chord in a sudden backward leap, and began clawing and pinching at her thighs, her stomach, her neck. Crushing things that clung to her like limpets and deluged crimson liquid all over her, streaking her flesh. Screaming hysterically. ‘Al,for fuck's sake what are they?’

In the instant before he was aware that one of the loathsome creatures had embedded itself in his testicles, Alan Marsden recognized them. He had studied and passed biology, had observed these same bloodsuckers behind the safety of a glass case. The same, only these were three, perhaps four times as large as the ones he had known.

‘Ticks!’ His voice quavered and he almost threw up. ‘No, Christ, they're fucking leeches! They're too big for ticks.’

He grabbed for his testicles, and felt something squash between his fingers. He swatted one on his thigh, pulled at another on his face. Blood poured freely and gushed down him, his blood. The leeches were all over him, all over Maggie. Sod her, he thought, the bitch could look after herself!

The pain was worse when he crushed them, and he wished that he did not know so much about them. He realized in his terror that the bloodsucking heads were still embedded beneath the flesh, repulsive things that would have to be removed surgically, or else they would quickly fester. They should be left intact, these bloated body hosts, burned out. But you couldn't, it was impossible, you'd go crazy at the thought, your mind would snap.

Maggie was on her feet, staggering about, her shapely naked body awash with the blood that these devilish attackers had sucked from her; screaming as she plucked one from her lower lips and threw up at the same time.

They had to get away from here, he knew, and get help. Even as he turned to flee he saw his naked companion breaking into a staggering run in the opposite direction, heading towards the canal.

‘Hey!’ He called feebly, but didn't really care. ‘Come back, that's the wrong way.’

Maybe she didn't hear him, a pain-crazed creature in full stumbling flight, and anywhere would do. Undergrowth snapped and crackled beneath her bare feet, and her strangled sobs were becoming weaker all the time. He opened his mouth to shout again, but discovered he had something hard and painful lodged on his tongue. Doubling up, spewing, he felt ticks or leeches or whatever they were everywhere. Dozens of them, a whole army come up out of the long grass to claim their human prey.

He could still hear the frogs; it was impossible to shut them out, even at the height of his pain and terror. A resonant clamouring, a triumphant vibration of the atmosphere completed by a background symphony from the grasshoppers.

Alan knew that he had to reach home, or else he would die here and they would find his bloodless corpse in the morning, white dead flesh that might have been the remnants of a vampire feast. Turning, weakening, he told himself to walk, not to try and run. And Maggie Lane could look after herself. It was all her bloody fault that this had happened, anyway.

He thought he heard a splash somewhere in the distance but he could not be sure and he certainly was not going back to look. Probably she had jumped in the canal in an attempt to quell the pain, or perhaps she sought to end it all. Whichever, it solved a lot of problems – the one good thing that had come out of all this.

He began to fight his way back along the overgrown bridle path. The pain had eased – his body becoming immune to agony – but he had to have medical help before he lost much more blood; it was gushing from all parts of his body. No longer did he search out his attackers; for the moment they could have their way. He was weakening, and even now he might not make it.

Then, suddenly, he found himself back on the road. Blinded by the blood which streamed from his forehead, he hesitated, not knowing which way to go, totally disorientated. He was crying, wishing that he could die now and get it over with.

Oh, God, surely somebody had heard their screams. But this was typical of Pen-y-Cwm, he thought bitterly. People snooped and gossiped, poked their noses into your business, but if there was any real trouble they didn't want to know, the hayseed bastards!

He stumbled along, not caring where he went so long as he put as much distance as possible between himself and that spinney with its revolting lurking horrors. It was as much as he could do to drag his feet along. Soon he would collapse, lie in the main street and bleed to death, he reckoned.

Maggie was probably dead already; if she had fallen into the canal then she would most certainly have drowned. Good riddance! It was all her fault. If it had not been for her, he thought, he would not have gone down to the wood by the canal tonight, he would have been back home, safe and bored, trying not to listen to his mother's continual bitching about upper classes and working classes and all that kind of crap.

Muriel Marsden had gone down to the front gate just after dusk fell. Now where was Alan? He really was a naughty boy staying out this late, she thought. Surely he had not been fraternizing with the villagers, letting the family down? It was all Edward's fault, coming to live in a small community; she should have stuck to her original argument three years ago that a large town house would have been more fitting. That way they need only have mixed with the right people and would not have been brought into close contact with everyday working folk. The countryside wasn't a nice place; there were always mice and insects and all kinds of revolting creatures at the best of times. Yes, she would put pressure on Edward to move, she resolved. It was damned silly him having to commute to town every day. Not that she wanted him under her feet all day – that would be a problem when he retired. Now what had Alan been up to? Her uneasiness was turning to fear. Something must have happened to him.

Somebody was coming, with slow dragging footsteps. No, that wasn't her son's step, which was always a fast slouch. How often had she told him not to drag his feet? She heard laboured breathing, like an animal snuffling its way down the pavement. She drew back into the shadows, ready to flee back to the safety of the house.

It really was too bad of Edward going off to his golf club's committee meeting when Alan had not returned. ‘The boy'll be all right. Damn it, he's nearly eighteen. Time he learned to stand on his own feet. What d'you think we sent him to public school for?’ he had told her.

Whoever it was was nearer now, only a yard or two away, pausing, standing still. Goodness, she thought, suppose it was that tramp fellow who was seen in the village from time to time, a filthy old ragbag swarming with lice. If it was, she would run back into the house and phone the police.

Oh, Lord, he was fumbling with the gate, clicking the latch, having difficulty with it. Any second he would step into the garden, into the shaft of light thrown by the outside light over the garage. Any second …

Muriel's heart was beating frantically. Another step and then she saw the intruder. She screamed as her eyes fell on the bloody countenance, the leech-infested features akin to some terrible cancer sufferer in the last stages of life, the festering growths that oozed thick dark blood.

Recognition, more by the silhouette than the distorted face – the short-cut hair, the slender figure. She heard the despairing cry, the plaintive ‘Mother’ as he spotted her in the shadows and lurched towards her.

Muriel Marsden screamed again.

And fainted.

6

Sue Richards had been headmistress of the small Pen-y-Cwm school for three years now. In her mid-thirties, she had a way with children that relegated a stern approach to the odd occasion. They looked up to her and respected her; she was a second mother to most of them.

Always immaculately dressed, she had short brown wavy hair, an abundance of freckles, and large rimmed glasses that added to, rather than detracted from, her attractive features. Slim and vivacious, she was the ideal choice for the small village school, which was now sadly declining in numbers.

The authorities would like to close it down, as she was well aware, in spite of their denials, and send all the pupils to Betheda school, six miles away, then upgrade the larger school. All the well-worn arguments for closure would be coming forth next year; Pen-y-Cwm was too costly to maintain, small numbers could be a disadvantage to the pupils (‘educationally deprived’ was the term used). Poppycock! She knew pupils fared better in schools where they had the opportunity of individual attention, and it would cost a damned sight more to provide transport daily to and from Betheda. A lot of very good small schools had had the chop these past few years. Sue remembered what they had done to Chapel Lawn. They had given it the death sentence even before they officially began their customary five-year investigation into a ‘possible closure’. The education authorities butchered small rural communities, they didn't just kill off the schools. Public meetings were a façade; they were just going through the motions, sitting up there on the platforms of village halls in front of a gathering of genuinely concerned parents and villagers, making out that they were impartial and just had the interests of the children at heart.

When the fight for Pen-y-Cwm school began, Sue was going to throw everything she had into the fray. In the meantime she tried to hide her worries. There was no point in alarming everybody. The children must not even guess.

From the classroom window she saw the old canvas-topped Land-Rover pull up in the road outside. Ah, good, Emma Earnshaw was back at school today. Sue had been worried by the child's absence and wondered why Diane had not phoned. Diane was also getting out, and walking across the playground with her daughter. Obviously she wanted a word.

‘Hallo.’ Sue met them at the door, smiling her usual welcome. ‘The school has been like a morgue without you, Emma. Are you better?’ She noted how the child's eyes were dark-ringed, her complexion even more pale than usual. ‘Go and get ready for class. Tina's in the cloakroom.’

‘I would have phoned you today anyway,’ Diane began nervously.

‘Nothing seriously wrong, I hope?’

‘No. Well … yes, I suppose there is. You see Emma saw a huge frog two nights ago down by our pond, then had hysterics and nightmares about it. We dismissed it as childish imagination at the outset but then …’ Oh, God, it all sounded so far-fetched. She felt a fool just recalling the events of last night. ‘Then last night there were some of them in the yard. They woke Emma up with their croaking. We saw them too, Sue. As big as rats, but they'd gone by the time Les got downstairs.’

‘I don't doubt your word,’ Sue Richards' wide smile had gone, she was pale and tight-lipped. ‘There was a slug the size of a courgette on my front step this morning. It took a whole handful of salt to kill it. Ugh! By the way, I suppose you've heard about Mrs Vickers?’

‘No!’ Diane knew Martha by sight, and occasionally passed the time of day with her. ‘I haven't heard … anything …’

‘She's dead.’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Fell and cracked her skull on one of those hideous garden gnomes she collects. Hubert Spencer found her. But there were a couple of dead earwigs in the kitchen, almost four inches long! And everybody I've spoken to has seen some creature or other that should go into the Guinness Book of Records. There's something decidedly queer going on.’

‘Les has phoned the ministry's pest officer,’ Diane replied, 'He's coming out to Pen-y-Cwm today. Something's got to be done.’

‘There was an ambulance at the Marsdens' house after dark last night.’ Sue lowered her voice. It wasn't her nature to gossip but there were times when she felt a need to talk to somebody. ‘I saw it drive away myself, beacons flashing and going like the clappers. Something must have happened, but we're not likely to find out in a hurry. The Marsdens don't like mixing with the likes of us village peasants.’

‘I'm worried about Emma.’ Diane glanced round to make sure that her daughter really had gone into the cloakroom. ‘She's so sensitive, imaginative. All this business isn't doing her any good. We didn't really want to send her to school this morning but she was so insistent. She needs an eye kept on her.’

‘And I'll most certainly do that.’ Sue glanced at her watch. Five minutes to nine and she always liked a prompt start to the day. ‘I won't let her out of my sight, Diane, and if I'm worried about the slightest thing I'll give you a bell.’

‘Thanks ever so much.’ Diane turned away. Oh, if only Emma didn't have to leave Pen-y-Cwm school at the end of this term. Or if Sue Richards could be transferred to the school in town. She was the complete village school headmistress.

Sue stepped up on to the raised platform in front of the blackboard where her desk stood, and ran her gaze across the assembled schoolchildren. A mental roll-call: eighteen in all, there should have been nineteen. Bobby Dixon had a suspected case of mumps. Those who had not already had it would probably get it. Thank goodness it was almost the end of term. She cleared her throat. It was Thursday, and that meant assembly.

‘Right, children, we'll begin with singing. Open your song books, please, and turn to “Morning Has Broken”.’ A rustling of pages; Emma was finding little Sarah's place for her. Sue would miss Emma next term. But the girl certainly did look out of sorts; she should have stayed at home.

The children sang lustily if somewhat out of tune. But it was what they put into it that counted. When they had finished the headmistress seated them, then reached for a book to read them a story. Preferably one that did not feature any species of insect or reptile life, she thought, and decided on a simple bible story.

It seemed a shame to keep the children indoors on a day like this. Normally she would have used a nature ramble across the adjoining fields as a diversion, but no way was that going to happen today. Out of the corner of her eye Sue caught a glimpse of a small van flashing by on the road outside, a bright yellow one like the council used. It could be the pest officer on his way up to Dingle Farm.

Playtime.

‘Right, children, all of you outside. But listen’ – raising her voice to halt the stampede for the door – ‘I shall be very cross if anybody goes outside the playground. Do you hear? I don't want to see anybody in the field. Now, off you go and don't let's have too much noise.’

Seconds later Sue Richards was the only one left in the classroom. She felt strangely tense, and had an inexplicable feeling of foreboding. It was all in the mind, she shrugged. She would go through into the kitchen and relax over a cup of coffee with Mary, the school cook. From the kitchen window she could still keep an eye on the children in the playground.

Mary had just swatted a bluebottle with a folded newspaper. A morass of red and black lay squashed and streaked on the pane.

‘Goodness me, you should have seen the size of that devil.’ The round-faced, good-natured woman wearing a spotless white apron swilled her fingers under the tap. These flies seem to get bigger every year. Your coffee's on the table.’

‘Thanks.’ She picked up her cup, took it over to the window and tried to ignore the fly remnants. Everything seemed to be all right out there. The boys were playing football, the girls gathered in a group looking at something on the ground. Something of importance to children, no doubt.

‘They'll have another go at closing the school next year.’ Mary had obviously been thinking about it too. ‘You mark my words, they mean business. We were fortunate to get a reprieve last time.’

‘I expect so,’ Sue sighed. ‘But we'll be ready for them. I … what's the matter out there?’

Emma and Tina were running back towards the school, an urgency about their movements.

‘Miss Richards!’ Emma came straight through to the kitchen. ‘There's ants in the playground. Hundreds of them, in that corner where the slabs are loose.’

‘There's always ants in the playground.’ Sue smiled and tried to make light of it, glancing again at the bluebottle remains on the window. ‘Go and tell everybody to keep away from that end. No, I'll tell them myself.’

She set her cup down on the table and walked quickly outside into the scorching sunshine. ‘Children, will you all keep away from those ants, please.’

One of the boys was crying, six-year-old Richard Wilson.

‘What's the matter, Richard?’

‘He's been stung by an ant, miss. A big 'un,’ somebody shouted. ‘They're huge, there's millions of them!’

‘Come here, Richard, and let's have a look at your hand. Everybody inside. Go on, quickly, into the classroom all of you.’

She slipped an arm round the sobbing boy and scrutinized the red swelling on his index finger. The sting was certainly a nasty one. ‘It's all right, Richard, we'll soon fix that. Let's go into the kitchen and find Auntie Mary's nice soothing cream.’

The children had all gone back inside. Thank God!

‘Come on, darling.’ Mary was ready to take over, a tube of Waspeze in her hand; she hoped it was effective on ant stings too. ‘We'll soon put that right.’

Sue went back outside.

The entire playground seemed to be crawling with ants, legions of them, reddish-brown insects almost the size of the bluebottle which Mary had squashed on the kitchen window. They were pouring out of the cracks in the concrete, squeezing their repulsive bodies up into the open. That in itself was bad enough; had it been a general scurrying to and fro of hustling insect life she could perhaps have accepted it. But it wasn't. The ants were pouring into organized formations, a kind of military line-up in a macabre parade of sinister understanding and precision. Platoons, regiments. A preparation for battle.

Sue halted a few yards from the door and felt her flesh beginning to creep. They were maybe fifteen yards away, still gathering, still coming up out of the ground, fanning out, massing. Facing the school building. Her mouth was dry, her legs felt unsteady and she had to fight against a rising panic.

The safety of the children was uppermost in her mind. She had seen the size of that vicious sting on Richard's hand. There were millions, perhaps billions, of ants out here. Just suppose they launched an attack on the school …

She began to back away, a step at a time. Don't alarm these awful creatures, don't let them know that you've guessed. Get back inside. Close all the doors and windows, stuff up any cracks with newspapers. Hide, cower. Then phone for help.

She got the feeling the ants knew what she intended to do by the way they moved closer; not a rush, but a confident advance, fanning out. Perhaps there were more of them round the back. She shivered in spite of the heat.

It seemed like an eternity before she reached the doorway, stepped back indoors and slammed the door shut. Her dress was clinging damply to her shapely body and there was a quaver in her voice as she shouted ‘Children!’ The clamour of juvenile voices died down, then small faces turned in her direction.

Don't panic, don't let them see that you're afraid. With an effort she got herself under control, and saw that a white-faced Mary stood in the kitchen doorway.

‘Children,’ Sue forced a smile, ‘would you close all the windows please. And Mary, perhaps you'd do the same in the kitchen.’

There was an expression of puzzlement on the cook's face, she was on the point of protesting, but then she nodded and turned away to obey; Boys and girls were clambering on desks; windows slammed, ill-fitting sashes were forced into place.

‘Look at them ants, Miss Richards. There's millions of 'em.’

‘Never mind the ants, Iain. They're nothing to worry about, we just don't want them in here, do we?’

‘They're sprouting wings, miss. I think they're getting ready to fly!’

‘All of you, sit at your desks and get your maths books out. We're going to write our tables.’

She looked out of the window. Iain was right; the ants had sprouted wings, their membranes like hoisted sails – fleets of aircraft jostling into place, ready for take-off, the playground their runway.

The door was the weak link, she realized, that gap beneath it where the stone floor had worn over the last half-century. In winter Sue put an old rug there as a draught-stopper. Now a patch of sunlight shafted in under the woodwork.

There was a pile of newspapers stacked in the corner, a ready supply for spreading over the desks during art lessons, when paints were often knocked over. Sue tried to appear casual, picked one up, and began to flatten and roll it the way she did when she made firelighters in the winter. Her fingers shook.

‘What are you doing, miss?’

Mind your own bloody business and stop asking questions.

‘What's that for, miss?’

‘I'm just putting some newspaper in the gap under the door, Tommy.’ She never told the children lies, preferring to avoid issues where possible.

‘Do you think them ants will be able to get inside?’

She stuffed the paper under the door, pushing it as tight as it would go. Maybe it would stop the ants, she hoped. They were an awful lot bigger than normal ants. She straightened up and took another look out of the window. The ants had advanced to about five yards from the school, then stopped. She could see them in detail now, their hard shiny bodies, their wings, their faces. It was like some feverish nightmare, those faces had expressions, masks of tiny hate, eyes that saw and understood. They knew she had plugged the gap under the door, and smouldered with anger at being thwarted as they sought another means of entry.

‘Right.’ Sue turned away. ‘As I said, we're going to write out our tables. I'll get the exercise books out of the stationery cupboard.’ The children had to be made to do something routine, and whilst their attention was diverted she would telephone for help, she decided.

She crossed the room and pulled open the door of the stationery cupboard, and this time she could not hold back her scream. The neatly stacked books on the shelves inside seemed to be alive, dark brown covers that pulsed with life, a sudden humming. Oh, God, the cupboard was full of ants too!

A rush of insect wings, then she slammed the door. She was aware of the impact, a pinging of hard little bodies against the woodwork, the catch clicking back into place, an angry buzzing from within, screams of insect rage at being frustrated. Something brushed her face.

Oh, God! Half-a-dozen ants had escaped from the stationery cupboard, hit the far wall and dropped down to the floor. Their virgin wings needed time to prepare for more lengthy flights. Now they were crawling.

The children were screaming, crying, standing on their desks.

‘Mary.’ Sue did not take her eyes off the ants as she picked up a heavy paperweight off her desk. ‘Look after the children while I deal with these horrible little blighters.’

The ants were scurrying to and fro, temporarily outnumbered and seeking some place to hide until the battalions outside came to reinforce them. Sue singled one out, struck hard and true with her weapon, and heard the body beneath it crunch like a brittle twig cracking. A second one died. She missed a third as it darted behind a chair, but killed it as it emerged. And in the background she heard the raging chorus of those still imprisoned in the cupboard.

A whirr of wings and she threw up her hands to protect her face. Three ants came at her in a vicious dive-bombing attack, one striking her cheek with the force of a catapulted missile, a second being parried and diverted. A third lodged in her hair, buzzed angrily and stung her.

She reeled, clawing at herself. The ant retaliated, crawled on to her flaying hand and perched on a finger. Oh, God! Human and insect stared at each other for maybe a full second and then she swiped it off on to the floor, crushed it to a sticky pulp with her foot.

Thwack. Thwack. Mary was after the other two, and got one with a rolled-up newspaper as it squatted on the wall. The other flew up out of her reach, settled and looked malevolently down on her.

‘It's all right, children. It's all right.’ Sue Richards' priority was her charges. They were huddled in a corner crying. ‘They're dead now and we'll soon fix that last one. The others can't get at us.’ I pray to God that they can't, anyway.

She was breathing heavily. The most important thing was to phone for help right away, she realized. The children would be all right with Mary. Sue went through the adjoining door into her office and glanced nervously around the room; there was no sign of any ants. She picked up the phone and dialled 999 with a finger that trembled.

‘Emergency services. Which service do you require?’

‘Police, I …’

The call was switched through. Sue was desperately attempting to get herself under control, to force her mind to function. Oh, Christ, they wanted all the details.

‘I'm the headmistress of Pen-y-Cwm school. We're trapped in the school. Ants, millions of them.’ You think it's a hoax and I don't blame you, but we need help desperately before they break through. ‘Yes, ants. Big ones, very big. They can fly too. One of the children has been stung or bitten, I'm not sure which ants do. We're barricaded in. Oh, thank you.’ Thank you for believing me. Or at least listening.

She replaced the receiver and went back into the classroom. Mary appeared to have everything under control. The children had stopped crying and were wanting to look out of the window. And the sole surviving invader was still perched high up on the wall watching them.

‘Help is coming, everyone.’ Sue hoped she sounded confident, buoyant. ‘The men will come with whatever they use to kill ants and we'll all be able to go out into the playground during the dinner break, I think we'll have a game of rounders then, girls versus boys.’ Just keep talking.

There was no noise coming from the stationery cupboard now. Perhaps the ants had realized the futility of trying to escape, she hoped. Sue wondered about continuing class, not ordinary lessons but maybe some drawing and painting. The children must be diverted away from the crisis, and the only way to do that was to keep them busy.

‘Now, children, suppose we get on with some drawing. I know you all love drawing. Go and sit at your desks and I'll hand out the pencils and paper. Suppose you all draw the houses you live in and then you can take your pictures home with you after school. And if they're good enough, who knows, your mothers might decide to frame them and hang them on the wall. And, by the way, Auntie Mary tells me it's chips for dinner today.’

Emma Earnshaw was looking exceedingly pale. Sue wished the child had not come to school today. Lord, if only they could all have gone sick this situation wouldn't exist.

‘Right, now, I'll …’

The room darkened as suddenly as if by some quirk of Nature night had come in the middle of the morning, a total blackness without warning, not even a swift dusk. There were screams everywhere, and Sue and Mary hurried to protect the children.

The windows were covered by an exterior living curtain, a wriggling pattering carpet of insects that had come in a single rush, swarms of ants pinging on the glass, somehow securing a hold, others alighting on top of them. Only in places did the odd shaft of light filter through a gap, and even that was blotted out as more and more ants took off from the concrete and hurled themselves at the school.

Scratching; they could hear the minute legs scraping the glass, see eyes like a million winking stars gloating over the terrified occupants of the classroom. We'll get to you somehow, you see if we don't.

‘They can't get in, children.’ Sue was on one knee as a number of the younger ones were trying to embrace her. ‘We are all quite safe, and any moment the police will arrive with the ant-killers. Emma, are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ Emma's reply from somewhere in the deep gloom did not sound very convincing. ‘I'm OK, Miss Richards.’

‘Good, then all we have to do is to wait.’

The atmosphere in the darkened schoolroom was stifling. Sue thought about asking Mary to go and pour some beakers of squash, but the cook was too busy comforting the children. She hoped that the lone surviving ant in the classroom would not decide to launch a solo attack. Oh, please hurry up and rescue us.

And suddenly it was light again. Just as darkness had fallen without any warning so full daylight returned without even a hint of dawn. Blinding sunlight filled the room, dazzling them all. It took Sue a few seconds to realize what had happened, and when she did her vivaciousness returned on a tidal wave of relief.

‘They've gone,’ she shouted. ‘The ants have gone, flown. Given up.’

Everybody rushed to the windows. Sure enough, the ants had called off the siege of Pen-y-Cwm school. Clouds of them were rising up into the clear blue sky, black spirals that resembled smoke from a garden bonfire. Wisping up into the air, hurtling away over the top of the big chestnut tree that stood on the other side of the road.

Just a few remained on the playground, crawlers that had not yet learned to use their wings. Some were attempting to fly and falling back on to the concrete, making it at the second attempt.

‘There'll be none left at all in a few minutes.’ Sue spoke loudly, and laughed.

‘What about those in the stationery cupboard, Miss Richards?’

Damn you, Emma Earnshaw, but thanks a million for reminding me. ‘Nobody's to go near the stationery cupboard until the men get here.’

‘Can we go out and play rounders?’

‘Later. After dinner.’

‘It's almost dinner time now.’ Mary stood up and dusted herself down. ‘I'd better go and put the chips on.’

‘Goodness me, so it is.’ Sue checked her watch. The morning had slipped away. Where the devil were the police?

A blaze of sirens answered her question, that familiar bee-bor, bee-bor. A white Escort with its blue light flashing was pulling into the playground. A yellow van followed it and came to a halt. A man wearing what appeared to be a bee-keeper's protective suit got out and adjusted a gauze visor. Two police officers came walking towards the schoolroom door. Sue recognized Sergeant Hatherton as she opened the door.

‘Now, what's the problem?’ The officer had a supercilious smile on his features. He was inclined to think that somebody had over-reacted. Not exactly a hoax, Sue Richards wasn't that sort of a girl. She had panicked over nothing, a nest of ants maybe.

‘Ants.’ Sue sensed his scepticism. She turned and pointed to where the single ant still occupied a place of malign observation high upon the wall. ‘And that cupboard's full of them. The playground has been swarming, they darkened the room, clustering the windows trying to find a way in.’

‘Hmm.’ Hathaway beckoned to the pest officer. ‘This is your pigeon, Frank.’

‘Get all the kids outside.’ The voice behind the mask sounded almost robot-like, and the ungainly movements convinced some of the watching younger children that surely this was a visitor from outer space. Richard Wilson started to cry again. ‘I'll fix 'em.’

Sue and Mary shepherded the children away to the furthermost point of the playground. Maybe it was best the kids watched the finale, Sue thought. Let 'em see the vile creatures killed, and that way they would be less likely to have nightmares about them. It needed an all's-well-that-ends-well finish to this morning.

The pest officer carried what looked like a large foot pump with a tube attaching it to a canister. He set it down on the floor and checked a dial.

But he had to open the stationery cupboard door first. He stretched out a gloved hand, depressed the catch with a click, then let the door swing back on its hinges, his finger on the release nozzle. Come on, you buggers, I'm shooting on sight.

He held his fire, peering intently. Exercise books, text-books, papers, pencils – a neat array. Nothing else!

He moved forward and examined the rear of the cupboard, the undecorated square of stone wall that was badly in need of pointing. He saw the gaping cracks where the limestone had crumbled and powdered, and knew where the ants had gone. Fuck 'em, he cursed. They had cheated him at the death and gone back whence they had come. Sod it, he wasn't having much luck today. That stupid bugger up at Dingle Farm had flatly refused to let him spray the greens that were alive with earwigs and caterpillars; they had almost come to punching each other. The fool was going to mix up some organic pesticide, do it himself. They could get an order to compel him to allow ministry pest control, but they probably wouldn't. If it had been rats or rabbits they most certainly would have done. Jesus, some people were wasting his time today!

‘They've gone.’ He still wore his visor as he emerged from the building and spoke to the headmistress and the sergeant. ‘Back into the wall, probably down into the ground again.’

‘But where have they all come from?’ Sue Richards looked tired and strained. There was a patch of dirt smudged on her face. ‘I mean, the size of them.’

‘It's the time of year.’ The ministry man shuffled towards his van as he talked. ‘They breed, the queens grow wings and fly off. And they're big because of the freak weather, nothing else. It ain't sprays like some folks are trying to make out. Sprays would've killed 'em.’

‘Well, your problem's solved,’ the sergeant grinned. ‘Nothing to worry about, as it turned out. Still, better to be safe than sorry, I suppose. We'd better get back to the station.’

Sue stood there tight-lipped, watching the council van back out into the road, the police car following. All a ‘fuss over nothing’; they should have been here half an hour ago.

‘All right, children, you can all go back inside.’ She felt weak with relief. But had the ants in the cupboard really gone? And might not those terrible flying hordes return? She began to tremble with apprehension.

She contemplated phoning for parents to fetch their children home, but decided against it. It would be bad for morale; far better that the youngsters completed their schoolday, and for them the whole business would become an anticlimax.

Dinner time. Who the hell felt like food after this morning, she wondered. As she entered the school the dull, now familiar, thwack of a folded newspaper echoed from the kitchen.

Mary had finally accounted for the last of the flying ants. For the moment the crisis was over.

7

Les Earnshaw stood and watched the pest officer depart, heard the van's gears crashing in anger, and saw a cloud of dust following the vehicle down the winding lane. So bloody much for that, from now onwards he would sort his own problems out, he decided. It was bloody silly of him, with hindsight, to have called in the ministry. They didn't understand organic farming and were too bloody pig-headed to listen. They just wanted to develop a chemical system and dictate it to farmers throughout the country.

‘And what are you going to spray with?’ Les had asked the pest control man.

‘A mixture that'll bloody do those buggers once and for all,’ was the gruff answer.

‘I want to know what formula you're using.’ The cans in the rear of the open van bore only official codes, no names.

‘I can't tell you that. It's none of your bloody business.’

‘Yes it is, and you don't use anything unless I know exactly what it is.’

‘We could make you. Get an order.’

‘Go and get one then, but in the meantime you don't spray a droplet here.’

Sheer arrogance. The NFU were as bad with that statement Johnson had made to the Tribune the week before last. Young people weren't eating enough meat, a lot were becoming vegetarians and he was ‘concerned about their health’. The sheer bloody cheek of the man, it made Les angry. All the NFU were bothered about was the fact that their members weren't selling enough meat, and if farmers' income dropped the union suffered as a result. They knew as much about protein as they did about these mutated insects and reptiles. They wouldn't know a balanced diet if they ate one.

Les made up three gallons of insecticide by crushing corms of garlic and steeping them in buckets of boiling water, then added some quassia chips. It would be as effective as anything the agrochemical people came up with. Its only drawback was that a shower of rain washed it off the foliage immediately, whereas chemicals remained. And contaminated. But it was not likely to rain today. Or tomorrow. Maybe never again.

He used a hand crop sprayer, strapped it on his back and moved slowly down the rows of brassicas. Here and there earwigs scuttled away between the leaves, caterpillars began to curl up. ‘They don't like it up 'em’ was one of Les Earnshaw's oft-used catchphrases. And judging by what he saw these insects certainly didn't like it up 'em.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon before he had finished. This evening he would sprinkle some of that Fertosan Slug Killer round the house in a protective circle, he decided. If it worked on slugs it might have some reaction on the frogs, too, if they returned after dark. And anyway, there were an awful lot of slugs about, most unusual for a long drought. Mostly in these conditions they crawled away to hide in damp dark places, under stones and in ditches. The dry atmosphere did not appear to be bothering this huge species; two whole rows of lettuce had been demolished during the nocturnal hours, and that would have to stop.

Wearily he began to make his way out of the cabbage patch. The ground was rock hard, dust rose in clouds beneath his heavy working boots. Some kind of irrigation was needed at Dingle Farm; if only the big pond didn't dry up in hot summers.

Suddenly he cried out aloud as he felt a sharp pain in his ankle, akin to the way a gorse spine sometimes lodged in the top of his boots and pierced the flesh, only a hundred times more painful. More powerful than a wasp sting. He stumbled, then looked down. Jesus Almighty!

Out of the low-hanging leaves of the sprout plants gigantic earwigs were pouring, a scuttling writhing stream of them, so many that they were wriggling over one another in their eagerness to attack. As big as newts, as venomous as angry vipers.

Attacking his boots, they discovered that the leather was not human flesh, then climbed up inside his trouser bottoms; stinging, digging in with their multitudinous feet to secure a hold. He slapped at his clothing and cried out again with pain, Moses and holy shit! He dropped the sprayer and broke into a run, then doubled up in agony. They were everywhere, an insect commando-style attack uncannily seeking to avenge the spraying of the brassicas, furiously biting into his flesh.

He was running blindly now. His whole body was crawling with them. He tore at his shirt, an old working garment that ripped, came apart in shreds, and was cast aside. The bastards were on his balls, biting fiercely, bringing him to a stumbling halt. He almost fell. He tugged at the waistband of his trousers, hopping on one foot as he began to drag them frantically off, his pants with them. Naked except for his boots and socks, he plucked at the crawling horrors lodged in his groin, yelling with agony as they stung in retaliation, trying to throw them off, but they clung to his fingers with the persistence of freshly plucked down.

Sweat, pain and fear all merged into panic. Run, run anywhere, he thought. The baked ground all around him was swarming with earwigs, regiments of them appearing out of the cracks, pouring from the foliage of the brassicas. A deliberate ambush, they had gathered en masse and lain in wait for an unsuspecting human. So methodical, so bloody organized, their intelligence was terrifying.

He glanced behind him but there was no way back. No escape. He would have to run the gauntlet. The pain in his testicles was spreading up into his stomach and had him spewing with agony and revulsion. Lie down and die, pray that the end will be quick. No! They had fed him that thought, and he was not surrendering; the strongest human instinct was survival. He resolved to fight them to the bitter end.

He forced his body upright and broke into a run again. Keep moving, try to ignore those that are already on you, he told himself, zigzagging, blinded by his own sweat, cursing.

The gate leading into the yard loomed up before him, the one that Emma had climbed to seek safety from the giant frog. Les Earnshaw hauled himself on to it and clung precariously. His attackers were already beginning to swarm up the aluminium bars, driven by a relentless urge for human flesh. They meant to have his at all costs.

He slid over on to the other side and felt them massing on his boots, the beginning of a concerted attack. Don't look down, for Christ's sake don't look down or you're done for! Wherever he went, he knew they would follow, into the house … Oh no, he couldn't take them there. The canal, how far was the canal? Too far, he would never make it, they would pull him down long before he reached that dank stretch of stinking algae-covered water.

And then he saw the pump. It stood there in the middle of the farmyard and seemed to beckon him with its hooked handle, squat and strong, a saviour. A piece of flotsam drifting towards a drowning mariner. A cry of hope escaped his cracked lips. It might work – there was still some water in the well; not much but maybe enough.

He reached it and clutched on to it, or else he would have fallen. Every inch of his flesh was burning. He felt like a foolish apiarist who had approached an angry hive without protective clothing; stung or bitten everywhere from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Blinded too, surely; there was a dark red haze shimmering in front of his body and he sensed a wave of dizziness sweeping over him.

He found the strength to lift the handle, and pumped it; once, twice. A trickle of water first, then a gush. His muscles strained to find a rhythm and keep it. He ducked his body beneath the flow, dropped into a crouching stance, arms uplifted, both hands on the pump. Pull, push back up, pull. Faster and faster, the cool spring water was flowing over him and already starting to revive him.

It was washing the earwigs off his body. He gave a strangled cry of relief as he saw some of them swept away in a flood, wriggling and hissing, trying to swim in the water which was forming into a puddle on the hard ground around his feet. Drown, you bastards, drown!

New strength seemed to flow into his muscles. The pump was clanking loudly, shuddering with the unaccustomed pounding. Using one hand now, he ran the fingers of the other through his saturated hair, tearing the stubborn earwigs from the strands. They were clawing at his pubics. Oh, Jesus God, he swore, the fuckers had even crawled inside his foreskin; he pulled it back and dislodged them. Others were trying to enter by way of his rectum. He grabbed and scooped, and got them out. Lifting his head, he swilled out his mouth and bathed his tortured flesh in an attempt to ease the stinging. Reviving, he muttered his thanks up at the cloudless sky above.

‘Les!’

The scream of horror penetrated his crude shower, making him straighten up and try to focus his gaze. He saw Diane rushing towards him, her features white with terror.

‘Keep away,’ he yelled. ‘For God's sake, keep your distance. I'm OK, I swear it. I've drowned the buggers.’

She pulled up a few yards from him, staring in disbelief, and backed away a step. ‘Oh, my God!’

‘They're done for.’ He looked down. Well, a few of them were, he conceded; their limp reddish-brown bodies were being washed away with the pump water as it flowed across the yard and formed puddles here and there. Earwig corpses, mostly the smaller ones; the larger insects, having had the strength to haul themselves up on to dry land, were beating a frantic scuttling retreat. One thing was sure, they did not like water. He recalled those occasions when he had found one lurking in the wash basin, then run the tap and swilled the intruder down the waste pipe. Secretly he had savoured the act but never more than now. They had bitten him, revolted him, but in the end he had triumphed. Well, for the moment anyway.

‘The greens were full of them.’ He inspected his body, and noticed scores of tiny punctures in the skin, the flesh beginning to puff up. He almost vomited again.

‘I … I can't stand much more of this!’ Diane swayed, and might have fallen had he not rushed to her, slipping an arm around her waist. ‘The whole countryside has gone berserk. There … there was a slug by the drain earlier. Oh, Les, you should have seen the sheer size of it, like a big fat … I don't want to talk about it, I'll be sick if I do. We've got to move out, for Emma's sake.’

‘Don't be ridiculous!’ Les tensed, remembering that fleeting moment when his instincts urged him to lie down and give himself up to the earwigs. ‘We can't just cut and run like that because of a few bloody earwigs.’

‘A few!’ She bit her lip, clenched her teeth. ‘The place is crawling with them, and all sorts of other oversize horrors too. Emma won't be able to stand it, it could damage her mentally for the rest of her life.’

‘It'd be the same wherever we went.’

‘You know damned well it wouldn't, Les Earnshaw. You know as well as I do that the only place it's happening is right here in Pen-y-Cwm, because of the agrochemical place. Or are you going to throw in the towel and agree with Roeder and the rest of them that it's just the freak summer that's responsible?’

‘All right, all right.’ He began to walk in the direction of the house. The hot sunshine was drying his body, making his flesh sting. ‘Tell you what, there's only a week or so until the end of term. If we can hold out until then and things haven't got any better, you can take Emma to your mother's for a short holiday away from it all.’

‘And you'll stay here and die like a martyr?’

‘We're not talking about dying, just some repulsive …’

‘Don't you be too sure.’ The tone of her voice halted him. He turned to face her. ‘Something very nasty happened to the Marsden boy last night. I heard about it in the village this morning. Ticks as big as five-pence pieces … mutants, more like leeches. They did to him what the earwigs did to you, only he didn't get off so lightly. He's in intensive care at the hospital, on a drip and fighting for his life. Christ knows how many pints of blood the devils sucked from him.’

‘Christ alive!’

‘That's not all. They found a body in the canal, a girl from town. The ticks had got her too. She must have fled in panic, jumped into the canal and drowned. Took the easy way out. We can't risk it, Les, for Emma's sake. And mine. And yours. The place is seething with creepies, every kind of loathsome creature you can think of, inflated to two or three times its natural size. It was on the radio, I heard it at lunchtime. Not anywhere else, so don't kid yourself that we can't run away from it, just a radius of a mile or two around the village. This village.’

He stayed silent as he entered the house and made for the stairs. A good bath, some soothing lotion rubbed over his tortured flesh and he would try to put it out of his mind.

‘You sent the pest officer packing, I see.’ Diane stood at the foot of the stairs, a note of reproach in her voice. ‘If you'd let him do what he wanted to do, maybe you would have been spared all this.’

‘They're not going to spray their vile poisons on my land.’ He turned round and stood looking down on her, hands on hips, and suddenly it occurred to her how magnificent he was. He had been to hell and back this last half hour and he was still going to fight. ‘It was the sprays that did this. They won't end it with sprays. There has to be some other answer, though Christ knows what it is.’

‘All right,’ she nodded. She knew when she was beaten. Her man was as immovable as that old iron pump out in the yard. ‘I won't talk about running again. Not just yet, anyway. But I think it might be wise to send Emma to my mother's for a while. I'll give Mum a ring tonight. But if you're staying, then so am I.’

‘Thanks.’ His voice was husky; it could have been because of what he had been through. And he was very weary. ‘But if things get really bad, then I want you to go away for a while, too.’

‘We'll see.’ She consulted her watch. ‘Crikey, it's time I was gone to pick Emma up from school. Go and get in the bath and afterwards put some cream on those stings. And if they're no better by tonight you'd better give Doc Barnett a ring.’

‘See you later.’ He went into the bathroom and began to run the taps.

Somewhere there had to be an answer to this escalating nightmare, one that lay outside chemical pesticides. The balance of Nature had been disturbed; now it had to be restored. He lowered his body into the soothing bathwater, still trying to figure it out.

8

It was shortly after mid-day when the yellow Datsun turned off the main road and somewhat hesitantly took the narrow road signposted ‘Pen-y-Cwm 4’. Both side windows were down but even so it was very hot inside the vehicle.

‘I shan't be sorry when this heatwave breaks.’ The woman passenger was in her mid-fifties, with short-cropped grey hair. Her square jaw and piercing eyes denoted a dominant character. She still wore a wedding ring even though it was nearly ten years since her husband had left her. In a lot of ways his departure had been a relief; she wasn't cut out to be a housewife. Nor a career woman. A sort of in-between, a county councillor. You didn't have to have qualifications on paper, just votes, and to get those you had to have the right ideas. At least, ideas that would get you the votes by telling the voters what they wanted to hear. And in due course Edna Millichip found herself on the county council's education sub-committee. Which was why she happened now to be sitting beside Randolf Egbert on their way to Pen-y-Cwm school.

Randolph was younger than his companion, not yet fifty. His jet-black hair (everybody knew he used Grecian 2000) was brushed straight back and plastered down with Brylcreem. His complexion was dark; his great-grandmother had been Spanish. Slim, dapper, he was the nemesis of small rural schools. Like a spectre of doom, when he put in an appearance at those rumoured with possible closure, the axe was about to be swung. A harbinger of gloom, a dasher of hopes, yet from the platforms of village halls at public meetings he appeared to listen with sympathy and had all the answers on the tip of his tongue because he had heard the questions so many times before. He even told the disturbed parents how to fight against the closure of their school and outlined the procedure for delaying the inevitable. A cruel game – secretly he enjoyed it – that left his audience with a glimmer of hope which he personally would extinguish later.

‘I don't mind the heat.’ He was sweating, but his denial gave him a sense of superiority over his colleague on the sub-committee. And that wasn't easy. Edna was a difficult woman, argumentative at every meeting, and she was not the most tactful person to take along to a school closure discussion; she riled some of the parents, deliberately, Randolph thought. That was her way of playing the game. He was more subtle.

‘You can have my share of the sun.’ She was irritable today and he was determined not to get into a silly argument over the weather. ‘What are we going to do, Randolph – stop off at the pub first or go straight on to the school and take a chance on being offered some lunch?’ They had only once not been invited to partake of a school dinner, and that had been recently at Betheda. Edna hoped that Betheda were not setting a precedent.

‘There isn't a pub in Pen-y-Cwm,’ he replied, slowing his speed. The road had become a narrow twisting lane and he had to take each bend cautiously. ‘I went there once before, the last time the school came up for review.’

‘No pub?’ She looked aghast. ‘Then there can't be any reasons for keeping the school open on community grounds.’

‘There's a village shop, a church, and the population is four hundred and sixty-two.’ The information spilled out just too easily. ‘A scattered community. Which is why, on paper, they need a school.’

‘Fiddlesticks!’ Her brow knitted. They can all go to Betheda. That will take it just up to the three-teacher status. Couldn't be better. Pen-y-Cwm, with under twenty pupils, is educationally depriving the children. It should have been closed last time round. I can't for the life of me see why you gave it a reprieve, Randolph. You had a projection of pupils, give or take a few either way. You must have known it would dwindle to this.’

‘It's always difficult in a borderline case.’ He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the road. ‘You can't close every school just like that.’

‘Why not?’

‘It has to be done over a period of time. Staggered.’

‘Why?’

Christ, how many times have I tried to drill a tactful approach into you, Edna. Be a little cunning, don't let the opposition guess that they haven't a chance. Ring the changes, let the odd fish slip through the net and catch him next time. ‘The erosion of small schools has to be gradual.’ Rhetoric again. ‘Another three decades and there will be no small schools, just large central ones. But it must not be done overnight. There would be a public outcry and even the minister might decide to slow the programme then. But in the long run they're all for the chop.’

‘Small schools are responsible for much of the low standard of education throughout the country.’ She came back at him with her own rhetoric. ‘Small schools and private schools. They breed class distinction. Some of the kids in these rural schools think they're a cut above the rest, and the parents are as bad. And the teachers can get away with blue murder.’

‘You can't say that about Richards. She's got a first-class track record.’

‘Hmm. It'll be interesting to see how she copes in a larger school. That hoity-toity attitude of hers won't go down in a town school. We are going to close Pen-y-Cwm, aren't we, Randolph?’

‘Not much doubt.’

There shouldn't be any doubt.’

‘Well, there won't be.’ Perhaps he was being indiscreet; he hoped that Edna with her big mouth wouldn't quote him, particularly at the next meeting of the subcommittee, where everybody was supposed to be impartial. ‘But we have to use a bit of tact.’

‘Another long-drawn-out public meeting in some God-forsaken place miles from civilization. They bore the pants off me. You sit there for bloody hours listening to all the same old rigmarole. “Please don't close our school because we won't have any more bazaars and we'll miss the Christmas Concert. You'll destroy the village, cut out its heart. And in winter when the snow comes we won't be able to get our children to Llanhowell and they'll miss weeks of schooling.” They always try to plug the weather aspect in these remote villages. I don't bloody care if they have to go to school on sledges, or whether they get there at all. They just want a cushy set-up where they don't have to get up off their backsides and they can think their brats are one up on the kids in the town schools. Oh, I know what's behind it all and so do you, Randolph. One of these evenings I'm going to get up at a public meeting and tell 'em a few home truths.’

‘You'd better not.’ Randolph was sweating profusely now. ‘There'd be a riot. We'd be lynched.’

‘Huh! The way these villagers bleat at the meetings makes me sick. It's a job trying to keep awake listening to all their fabrications. They go to all these extremes like reckoning up all the unmarried men in the area and how they'll either get married or put a few of the girls in the club, and by 1995 or whatever the school will be bursting at the seams. It's a bloody insult to your intelligence.’

‘I know, I know.’ Another signpost; Pen-y-Cwm was 1½ miles. ‘Anyway, today is just a casual impromptu visit as far as we're concerned, Edna. We just happened to be passing by. It's no bad thing to see a school as it really is. Sometimes you can spot a few things in our favour. Remember that time when we caught … oh, I forget which school it was, but the headmistress had got multiplication tables pinned up on the inside of the stationery cupboard door. She was using all the old out-dated teaching methods. Now, if we'd called there announced then she would either have kept the cupboard door closed or else taken the tables down. Educationally deprived of modern teaching methods, those kids were. Wham, bang, wallop, that school was out for the count in the first round.’

‘There was something about Pen-y-Cwm on the radio yesterday morning,’ Edna Millichip yawned. ‘Nothing of any great importance to us. They've got a plague of insects there. Aphids or something – I can't remember, I wasn't that interested. But I'll bet half the children in class are spending their time looking under their desks in case there's a spider about to crawl up their legs. Now, you wouldn't get that in a town school. Rural schools have too many distractions. God, I wish we could find a pub. I'm dying of thirst and I could use a bite to eat as well.’

‘I believe it's all home-cooking at Pen-y-Cwm.’ Randolph's remark was meant by way of consolation.

‘That's another thing that should be stopped,’ she snapped, the seat creaking as she shifted her position. ‘Children should be given a choice, not have any old mush pushed at them. The only reason it's allowed to continue in places like Pen-y-Cwm is because it's too damned far out for the cafeteria van to come. But that will all come to an end when the school closes, anyway. We owe it to the kids.’

‘What's that?’

‘Like a cloud of something or other up above than wood on the left. There, see it?’

‘Insects or something.’ There was a note of annoyance in Edna Millichip's voice at the interruption; they had come out here to look at a school, not a swarm of insects. ‘Whatever it is, it's no concern of ours.’

‘There's a lot of them. Maybe gnats. Or a swarm of bees. Or wasps.’

Edna yawned and half-closed her eyes, and then something struck the windscreen with a pinging sound like a volley fired from a pea-shooter. Scarlet blobs showed up on the thick shatter-proof glass, mulches with wings sticking up out of them.

Ping-ping-ping. They were coming thick and fast now, splattering all over the windscreen, the oncoming cloud of insects thickening, seemingly intent on a kamikaze-type attack on the vehicle.

‘They could be … mayflies.’ Randolph had slowed the car right down to 15 m.p.h. His vision was obscured; it was like driving into a sudden thick bank of fog. He remembered that time some years ago when he had encountered a migration of mayflies on a country road. Damn it, the car would need washing at the weekend now, he realized. One good thing about heatwaves, that was a chore you didn't have to bother with. Now the Datsun would be plastered with hundreds of tiny squashed flies, ones that did not wash off easily with a sponge and a bucket of shampoo. Still, he could always call in at the car wash in town and charge it up to expenses, the occupational hazards of a county councillor on the education sub-committee. A clean car was the hallmark of integrity and trust.

‘God Almighty!’ Edna sat bolt upright. The windscreen was an opaque mush of crushed bodies and trickling blood. ‘You'd better pull up, Randolph.’

‘You said something about a plague of insects in this part of the world, didn't you?’ He was uneasy, and felt for the window winder. ‘Better wind the windows up, we don't want the devils in …’

Too late! Edna Millichip screamed as a sudden rush of insects hurtled in through the side window, a stinging swarm that hit her full in the face like a charge of birdshot. Their impact embedded some of them in her flesh, the rest tumbled, found a hold. And crawled.

Randolph Egbert's yell of fear was cut off abruptly as the intruders filled his mouth, like a handful of small sharp gravel cramming and weighting his tongue, trying to slip down the back of his throat. In a fit of panic he squirmed, let go of the steering wheel, and clawed them out. Logic yelled at him to brake, but his foot stamped down hard on the accelerator and the Datsun shot forward and swerved out of control.

The car narrowly missed an ancient spreading oak. Had it made contact, it might have been more merciful for the occupants from the education sub-committee, ensuring them a quick end. But it didn't. The offside front wheel bounced on a protruding root, threw the car clear, and almost overturned it. It lurched, mounted the rough verge, hung suspended for a second as the underside scraped on a hidden mound of council-dumped frost grit, then toppled into the ditch beyond and wedged at an angle, the engine still running.

The insects poured through the open side windows, an ever-increasing swarm honing in with uncanny precision as they scented human prey. Crawling over one another in their lust for flesh, their macabre discipline gone as they joined the frenzied orgy. Soldier ants up to an inch long and as deadly and as ferocious as their far-off Amazonian cousins.

Randolph Egbert, briefly knocked unconscious, had a few seconds of merciful bliss before the pain jerked him back to wakefulness. His brain refused to accept what it saw; it was a nightmare, he must have been ill, any second he would awake in a sweat-soaked bed. He might have died in the belief that he was the victim of a feverish hallucination except for the physical agony, and that was real enough.

He tried to struggle up, but his seat belt was pinioning him at a crazy angle, a gigantic butterfly carefully added to a wall case collection. He groped for the release catch, his hand on fire with venomous stings, the pain beginning to travel up his arm in the wake of the clustered marauders. A click and he was free … except that his left leg was doubled beneath him at an unnatural angle. He tried to move it, but the knee joint bulged out of place. A dislocated knee, oh, Jesus Christ!

He closed his eyes, not wanting to see what the ants were doing to him. Edna was screaming beside him. For fuck's sake shut up, you bigoted old cow! I can't bloody move either.

‘Randolph, help me!’

He opened his mouth and began to yell ‘shaddup’, but the ants beat him to it, streams of them scaling his chin, hopping in through his parted lips. He closed his mouth quickly, but a number had made it inside, stinging his tongue and gums. He heaved; as a child one thing he dreaded was the doctor pushing down the back of his tongue with a spoon and telling him to say ‘aah’. His vomit came up in a rush, then spewed out, sweeping the ants with it, showering those still on his chin, like the defenders of an ancient castle repelling all would-be boarders with boiling water. Now keep your bloody mouth closed. Maybe somebody will see the crashed car and come to the rescue. Or maybe they won't because we're out of sight in a deep ditch.

The engine was still running. He knew the golden rule when involved in an accident – switch off the ignition. I can't even reach the key, and if we do explode then the end will be quick. For the ants, too.

It felt as though his whole body was being consumed by flames. He writhed in his seat, cursing his injured leg. If it wasn't for that he would probably be able to climb out through one of the open windows. Fuck you, Edna Millichip, I told you to close your window but you were too busy talking. I hope they don't close the bloody school, it'll serve you right. And if we do get out of this alive, I'll vote against you at the next meeting of the sub-committee.

That stupid bitch was screaming blue murder, he realized. It sounded as if she was choking now. That was because she had opened her mouth too wide, as she always did, and let the bastards in. He wanted to laugh at the thought; at last somebody had been able to shut her up.

Don't look. I've got to. They were crawling back and forth across his eyes, some were in his nostrils. He tried to blow them out, which made them wriggle in anger – and sting. He could not breathe properly. He knew he would suffocate before long, but he dared not open his mouth.

He was numb from the knees downwards, probably because this cramped position had restricted the circulation in the lower half of his legs. A timely anaesthetic. But he could feel them on his thighs and knew only too well that they were seeking out his genitals. Soft tender flesh, sweetbreads for the taking.

Oh, God, the buggers weren't just stinging, he could sense their teeth biting deep, gnawing, ripping. He couldn't stand the excruciating pain much longer. They're fucking well eating us alive! Wasn't that what armies of soldier ants on the march in South America did – came upon an unsuspecting victim, ate his flesh right down to the bones and left a skeleton in their wake, a trail of sun-bleached bones marking their progress through the jungle? Neither man nor animal was spared. The natives had a name for the ants, Randolph had read about it somewhere, probably in one of the Sunday newspaper magazines. Marabunta. Something like that, anyway.

He struggled feebly. Once he was dead they could do what they wanted to his corpse, but please wait until then, he begged. Bloody well let me die first!

He spewed again, washing away another company of insect soldiers in a foaming tide of vomit. He gulped for air just once, but that was enough to let them in. And now he had not got anything left to spew them out of his mouth with.

They were swarming in his crotch, fighting each other to get at the succulent flesh. Randolph winced, knowing now what it felt like to be circumcised and castrated at the same time. A few seconds later he fainted, plunged into the depths of unconsciousness and left them to take his body.

Edna had almost choked, but just when she might have died she swallowed, and felt those revolting bodies come tumbling down inside her, stinging her as they slipped down the human chute. An abdominal wriggling, stinging her in sudden fear, then they began to feast on living offal as though they were determined to eat their way to freedom.

The ants were everywhere; not an inch of her body was spared. It was obscene. Just as Maggie Lane had closed her thighs in an attempt to protect her private parts, so Edna did likewise; a token protest, for her attackers bit and chewed, and forced their prey to open up for them. She cried out, a strangled shriek of anguish. The dirty bastards are raping me!

She convulsed at the vile penetration, the forced entry. But pain brought with it a macabre sensuousness, with muscles expanding and contracting, arousing feelings which she tried in vain to resist. Her legs flayed, her arms threshed and caught her companion, and he slumped against her. Get away from me, Randolph! Don't you dare to touch me! She shouted her protests through a mouthful of angry, eager ants. They were really beginning to stifle her now, jamming her windpipe, fighting amongst themselves.

Their infiltration of her flesh was complete; every orifice was packed with their squirming overgrown bodies, a thousand tiny cuts bit right down to the bone. She tasted them, an acrid earthy flavour on her palate, and smelled their compost-like odour in her blocked nostrils. Although she heaved, it was impossible to vomit; her gullet was blocked by an advancing obstruction.

Edna Millichip breached the pain barrier and lay there trembling. She wanted to see what they had done to her, she felt so much lighter, as though she had miraculously shed a stone in weight. She opened her eyes, but there was only darkness. Oh, God, I'm blind. They've eaten my eyes!

Her mind was ready to snap. She tried to will death but it mockingly eluded her. Life remained in the bloody near-skeletal corpse, while the flesh disappeared beneath the wriggling, fighting hordes.

Just one sensation remained, the most awful humiliating one of all: an escalation of sensuality, a shuddering that began in her lower regions, gathering force in her desecrated womb and spread out to the decimated remnants of her body, making it shudder; and the force was building up towards a peak.

Her brain could not take any more and she went over the top and spun crazily. Maybe she laughed; at least, she thought she did. It was bloody rude to laugh or talk with your mouth full, wasn't it? Old Tomlinson at the subcommittee meetings was the worst offender, and during the afternoon break he sprayed everybody with biscuit crumbs. It was a joke that had worn thin and become revolting. Now she was doing it, laughing and spitting mangled ants all down her tits. And she had a suspicion that she had messed her pants, too. Or it could just have been the ants running back out of her.

She was starting to shudder all over, clawing at the nearest object. It felt like old Randolph, except that he was never quite as thin as that. You've lost weight, Randy. Been worrying yourself, have you? Tell you what, I'll let you into a little secret. So you know what the buggers are doing to me? You've guessed, eh, and you're bloody jealous because I'd never let you so much as touch me. Remember last Christmas when all the members of the sub-committee went for a drink after the last meeting of the session? Don't try and make out you've forgotten, you sod, because I haven't, and I even told old Tomlinson and he pissed himself laughing.

Trying to get a kiss out of me under that sprig of mistletoe! I told you there was no chance but you were too bloody drunk to take ‘no’ for an answer. So you tried a grope and I smacked you right across your bloody face. I'll bet the people in the street outside thought a pistol had gone off. That sobered you up. And when the committee resumed after the break you acted as if nothing had happened, kidded yourself I'd forgotten. You're a slimy bastard.

But now the ants are doing to me what you always wanted to do. Don't lie, I could read it in your expression, the lust, your filthy thoughts reflected in your sly eyes: I'd love to fuck you, Edna. Just once. Just bloody once and I'd be satisfied. Tough luck, you never made it.

Her body bucked and heaved, then rolled across the seat. Her breath wheezed and became constricted. She opened up willingly, urging the insects to flood her and give her one last moment of sheer bliss now that the pain was no more.

Then she hit her peak and everything seemed to explode into a kaleidoscope of dazzling lights before her sightless eyes, a shuddering of flesh that wasn't there any more.

And she died at the very height of her ecstasy.

9

‘It's just like autumn.’ Diane spoke in an expressionless tone as she stood staring out of the window across the evening landscape. The last rays of the setting sun slanting down from the mountains glinted on dull brown withered foliage; some of the trees were even bare, which was why she could see the foot of the Beacons from Dingle Farm. In normal times one rarely saw them before November.

‘No, it's not like autumn.’ Les moved to her side and slipped an arm around her waist. ‘The leaves are drying but there's no splendour in the change, just withered death. Three months before their time, and it isn't just the heat and the drought. It's the insects. The aphids, the caterpillars, you name 'em, and they're devouring anything that's green and has sap in it. Our vegetables are just skeletons, and by the end of the week there won't even be any stems left, the buggers will have eaten them right down to the soil. They're ravenous, with outsize bodies that need three or four times their normal intake of food.’

‘It's horrible,’ she shuddered. ‘Pen-y-Cwm will be just an arid desert by the middle of August and what then? Will the creatures move on?’

He did not reply. They had heard this morning that Alan Marsden had finally given up his struggle for life, and later in the afternoon news had reached them of those two county councillors found in their crashed car. Or what was left of them, skeletons, every shred of flesh eaten from their bones. It was the ants that were responsible, they had no doubt about that. But they had to try and stop themselves from thinking what would have happened if the killer armies had breached the school earlier in the day.

‘They'll surely evacuate the village, declare it a disaster area.’ Diane's voice trembled. ‘They've got to. A lot of the villagers have already packed up and left, anyway. Who can blame them? We're the damned fools for staying.’

‘We can't just up and run.’ For the first time since all this had begun Les sounded unconvincing.

‘Stay and die,’ Diane said with biting sarcasm. ‘Die like those poor devils in Bhopal did in December '84. It's the same situation here, even if it is on a smaller scale. Worse in a way, because we've got a plague of loathsome insects as well. But the leak could happen at any time; we've already seen what the spraydrift has done. And all because somebody wants to kill off a few pests in the easiest possible way and to hell with everybody and everything else!’ Her voice rose to a high pitch, her fists were clenched so that her knuckles whitened. ‘And they'll go on doing it, heedless of facts. They're still bloody denying that the Sellafield leaks caused a drastic increase in cancerous diseases, and over two thousand people killed in India didn't stop them from manufacturing deadly poisons elsewhere. They just don't bloody care!’

‘You're right. Roeder can test his sprays on his trial ground. They might not be passed by the authorities, but to hell with the people of Pen-y-Cwm who get the drift.’

‘We can't stay here.’

‘You could keep on running for the rest of your life but you'd never get away from agrochemicals wherever you went, except maybe in the Himalayas. There's no hiding place.’

‘But at least they don't have these horrible insects anywhere else.’

‘Yet!’ He grimaced. ‘Maybe this is only the start. Our crops are finished and it'll be a lean winter. But we'll get by, we'll still be here in the spring.’

‘I admire your confidence.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘But we have to think of Emma. It's the last day of school tomorrow and she can go to Mum's for a holiday then. Mind you, she doesn't want to go. She's like you, stubborn. I've told her it's only for a week, but we can always extend her stay.’

He nodded. ‘At least we haven't seen those frogs since. I guess the big pond drying up was a blessing in disguise, it's driven them off the Dingle. They've gone somewhere else, which makes me think that maybe it isn't going to end at Pen-y-Cwm.’

Les went outside after tea. It was a balmy summer evening, provided you didn't look too hard at the foliage. Everything looked so stark: leaves stripped from the trees, shrubs and bushes bare. They might not recover, remaining a tract of desolation for years to come.

He did not really want to view his desecrated crops again, and should have kept away. Leave it until the spring, he resolved. The winter would surely herald the end of this pestilence, anyway. Then he would plough it all up, start again, and pray that the hedges and trees would come back into bud. The winter was their only hope, and pray God it would be a hard one. And an early one.

Those brassicas he had sprayed were all gone, just a few knobbly stalks stood starkly on the bare dusty soil. He'd wasted his time, got stung and bitten for nothing. Like shovelling snow. Two winters ago he had spent a full day clearing a track down to the lane so that they could get out with the Land-Rover. And what had happened? Within twenty-four hours the weather had changed drastically and it had poured with rain for two whole days and washed all the snow away.

Those cabbage stalks were moving, were alive. He shivered in spite of the warmth, and knew what was happening. Aphids, greenfly; layers of them, the size of normal ants, swarming on anything and everything that showed a trace of green. Total devastation before his eyes.

There was a crunching sound that had his flesh creeping, as it used to when he was a boy and some of his classmates took a sadistic delight in scraping their fingernails along the side of the school bus. The aphids were chewing away … but not just eating the greenery.

Masses of living green interspersed with red and black gave a polka dot effect from where he stood. Cautiously he advanced, straining his eyes. God Almighty, ladybirds! It was difficult to make them out amongst the greenfly, but it was ladybirds all right, shells the size of one-pence pieces, outnumbered, feasting noisily on their natural prey. And being feasted upon …

Maybe one ladybird for every five hundred aphids, but he wondered how the devil he could even begin to count them. He couldn't, in the end he did not even hazard a guess. He just stood and watched, hypnotized.

The greenfly were retaliating. They had assumed a new role in Nature's pecking order. With an unbelievable ferocity they fought back, pulling the ladybirds down by sheer weight of numbers, tearing and crunching, dismembering, mutilating.

Les winced. A brief hope had flickered within him that an army of red and black saviours had arrived, that at least the greenfly menace would be wiped out. He looked at the sky, the bare branches, searching for signs of a sizeable ladybird invasion. He saw aphids, caterpillars, a crawling landscape. But no more ladybirds. They were outnumbered; they would perish like everything else.

And with deep dusk came the giant night moths, attracted by the lighted cottage windows. A fluttering and pattering against the glass, as multi-coloured insects the size of small bats threw themselves relentlessly at the panes. Swarms of them, and Diane sensed that it was not just the light they were seeking but the humans sheltering within their stifling habitations.

She closed the curtains. ‘It's only moths.’ She tried to sound casual for Emma's sake.

‘They're horrible, Mummy. Some of those daddy-long-legs are as big as stick insects. But they don't bite, do they?’

‘No, they just give you the creeps.’ Nature had gone berserk, she thought.

‘I don't really want to go to stay at Gran's.’

‘Well, I'm afraid you'll have to, otherwise she will be offended. It's only for a week, and you'll enjoy going round the shops in town, and maybe even going to the swimming baths. There won't be any of these overgrown insects there. And when you come back to Pen-y-Cwm they'll all be gone.’

‘No, they won't,’ Emma retorted. ‘I know they'll still be here, and they might even have grown bigger.’

‘Don't talk like that, darling. The authorities will have to come up with something during the next week, and if they can't then the whole village will be moved out. Daddy and I will probably come to stay at Gran's for a while, too.’

‘And who will look after the goats and the hens, and the turkeys and the geese? You won't be able to bring those with you, because Gran says you aren't allowed to keep animals in the town.’

Diane did not reply because there was no fooling Emma. Les would stay, come what may, and that was a very worrying possibility.

‘It's bedtime, Emma. I've drawn your curtains, and once the light is out the moths won't bother you. So don't keep reading late. Put your light out and get to sleep as quickly as you can.’

Oh, God. Diane felt as though she would have a nervous breakdown before long. Each night, each day, brought new horrors, fresh monstrosities. The authorities must know by now that all this had been brought about by some experiment at Roeder Agrochemicals that had gone wrong. But an equal certainty was that they did not know how to bring it all to an end. It had got out of control and blown up in their smug faces.

Obediah went down to the green each evening, as he had always done on fine summer evenings for as many years as he could remember. He was not going to stop now because for him time was running short. His cough was worse and the phlegm he spat on to the ground was a darker tinge every day. There was no point in doing anything about it at this stage in life, and he reckoned a pipeful of twist more or less would not make the slightest difference. When his time came he would die as he had lived, stubborn to his last wheezing breath.

The village was deserted. Lights shone in the dusk, and only his failing eyesight prevented him from seeing the clouds of moths that battered themselves unceasingly against the illuminated glass panes on either side of the main street. The midges were a nuisance, but good luck to them if they cared to risk their teeth on his leathery skin, he thought.

He tapped his way with his stick to the bench and lowered himself on to it. It was a beautiful evening, just like those he remembered they used to get before the war. The trouble today was that everybody was in such a damned hurry that they never found the time to sit down and take stock, reflect on things around them. They were making far too much of this plague of insects; he had not seen anything much different, not that his eyes were as good as they used to be. Mrs Morris had been going on about it in the post office this morning when he called to cash his pension. Her trouble was her mouth, gossiping all day long and exaggerating. She had made a lot of unnecessary trouble for folks over the years. It was the likes of her that were creating panic by spreading rumours. There were always insects in the country, and if you didn't like them then you had to put up with them. This hot summer had doubtless created a few more than usual, and people were always thinking that pests were bigger and more plentiful than they had been the year before. So they created a plague, something to talk about, made scapegoats of them, an excuse for bad gardeners.

Obediah cut a slice of twist with his penknife and rubbed the tobacco in his gnarled hands. The bloomin' baccy was dry, he noticed, crumbling to a powder so that he virtually had to pour it into the bowl of his pipe. That was Mrs Morris's fault, she'd either left the packet in the hot sunshine or else she'd had it in stock for too long. And at over a quid an ounce (bedamned if he was going metric at his time of life) it wasn't on. He could remember the time when Beano or Bogey was seven pence an ounce and it was always black and juicy, fit to chew as well as to smoke. This modern generation wasn't man enough to smoke a real strong tobacco; they liked it light and fluffy, flavoured with fruit juices and all done up in a fancy polythene pouch. The men today weren't men, they couldn't have matched the boys in Obediah's day. And he'd tell Mrs Morris about the twist next Thursday, let her know she couldn't fob him off with some old packet she'd had lying around for ages, give the sharp-tongued sourpuss the rough edge of his tongue.

And I haven't forgotten, Elsie, don't kid yourself. I can remember you having to marry Jack Morris in an all-fired hurry because he'd rung the bell. Obediah sniggered softly to himself. These kids today were doing it all the time, as brazen as you like, naked in the long grass in the churchyard. An insult to the dead. The likes of Martha Vickers would never be able to rest in peace with that sort of thing going on, God bless her soul. And the vicar didn't seem to give a damn, blast his fat arse. The Reverend Myatt wouldn't have stood for that sort of thing just after the war, the first war. He would have been out there of a night with a willow swish in his hand tanning any bare arses he saw.

Obediah's pipe glowed; the dry tobacco crackled and showered sparks down his faded overcoat, and burned a few more tiny holes before extinguishing. No, he wouldn't be sorry to go, he thought, not the way things were now. There was no respect left in the world, either for persons or property. Just look what some varmint had done to the telephone kiosk on the other side of the green, ripped all the wires out, smashed the …

He jerked up, clutched at his leg and spilled another shower of sparks. There was something on his leg, something had crawled up inside his trousers and was biting him. He swatted at it; midges probably. Damnation! He grunted with pain and loosed his grip on his pipe. It hit the ground and bounced away like a miniature firework display.

Obediah was bent double, tugging his trouser leg up, a sharp stinging sensation running all the way up his leg as though a vicious trailing briar had embedded itself in his skin. His fingers touched something, a body of some kind, all cold and slimy, stuck to him like a suction cap. He struck at it; it bulged like a piece of soft rubber, then sprang back into shape. And bit him again.

He let out a hoarse cry and clawed with his fingernails in an attempt to dislodge it. Bumps, ridges, all of them icy cold, stuck to his flesh, biting him in sudden anger.

He did not understand it, could not work out what they were, and with his ailing eyesight (he had never heard of cataracts) it was impossible to make them out in the deepening twilight. Whatever they were, they were obviously intent on savaging him; he had not sensed their arrival on his body and did not even know how long they had been there.

He lurched to his feet, his breath rasping in his lungs. He needed help, he realized. Doctor Barnett's house was only a couple of hundred yards away, if only he could be sure in which direction he was going. He paused as he tried to discern the houses by their silhouettes, and then in one awful moment Obediah knew – knew that his attackers were all over him!

He clawed at his face and ripped at something on his cheek which was pliant and slippery. And evil. With a stabbing, deep-rooted pain like neuralgia, he felt them starting to move – as though they had crept on him and lain still, awaiting some signal to attack.

His nostrils were smothered, he couldn't breathe, and as he opened his mouth an elongated shape rolled in. He bit hard instinctively, a subconscious reminder of how he used to bite off a plug of tobacco in his younger days. His dentures sprang back open and were dislodged. He drew back his tongue but, whatever it was, it was already on it, weighting it down. Biting.

He staggered a few yards, flailing his arms wildly, trying to shout, but his yells were muffled. He slapped at his attackers; they were squelching their way over his eyes, pulling down the lids so that he could not see. The bulbous, cold-blooded creatures of the night inched a freezing path down inside the neck of his shirt to join those which were climbing up inside his trousers.

Snakes, he decided, but they weren't long enough, didn't wriggle, just inched along limpet-like, biting as they went. He had lost all sense of direction. He blundered back towards the seat, caught it with his shin and fell headlong.

Just lying there in total darkness, he found his retaliations becoming more feeble by the second. There was a cluster of the creatures on his throat, bunching together as though they sought to throttle him. He could not breathe at all now and the one that entered his mouth was wedged in the back of his throat choking him.

Obediah died quickly, and then they came out of the long dry grass to claim him, black sausage-shaped creatures that were almost invisible in the darkness, oozing up on to the lifeless form, leaving slimy trails in their wake. And as they fed their bodies became bloated, and pulsed with the sheer effort of returning to the undergrowth before daybreak, their black shiny forms streaked crimson with the blood of their victim.

They hid themselves away as the sun came up over the mountains in the east, sheltering from the heat of the day.

Waiting for darkness to fall again.

10

All livestock in Pen-y-Cwm had to be dipped under ministry supervision. Les Earnshaw did not argue when the men came with a trailer and took the goats down to the sheep dip on the Wiseman farm. Goats were not officially classed as farm animals and escaped a lot of regulations, but a virtual state of emergency had been declared within a five-mile radius of Pen-y-Cwm. Everything that had fur had to be dipped; they weren't taking any chances. The authorities were getting desperate. But they were predictably silent on the issue of chemical sprays.

The day after Emma had gone to stay with Diane's mother, Les had found Robbie dead in his kennel. The ticks had got the collie, there was no doubt about that; a few, too bloated to move, were still embedded in the dog's skin. Les had cremated him on a pile of old tyres, then he had been physically sick. The bloodsuckers had vamped Robbie just as they had Alan Marsden. No living thing was safe.

Today they were burying Obediah. Most of the villagers and neighbouring farmers who had stayed behind after the steady exodus of the past week would attend. In rural areas everybody went to funerals; you knew they would come to yours when the time came. It was an age-old custom.

Les was puzzled about how Obediah had died. It was rumoured that the ticks had killed him, but Hubert Spencer was telling everybody that the killers had left slimy trails all over the green. He had seen them with his own eyes shortly after the corpse had been removed. Like snails' tracks, he said, only bigger. Everything was bigger these days.

Les was uneasy. It was too convenient to blame the ticks, and ticks did not leave any trace of their comings and goings. Was some fresh horror lurking in the dying undergrowth, some bloated mutant that had yet to show itself in full daylight?

All the same, he and Diane arrived at the church shortly before two o'clock and managed to find places in the crowded pews. The organist was playing soft music that sounded eerie, but made him shiver slightly in the cool gloom of St Victor's, glancing into shadowy corners, wishing that the Reverend Bracton would hurry up and get it all over and done with so that they could get back out into the sunshine. He felt the cold clammy hand of death stroking gently up and down his spine, as though it was singling out the next victim.

The church doors crashed open to admit the bier, an unnecessarily dramatic entry of the dead that had Diane starting visibly. She was tense, her pulses were racing. Coffins were such stark macabre things, psychologically bad for you; there was a theory that funerals were therapeutic, that they helped to get the grief out of your system. She disagreed. They were a depressing ritual. Nobody here was actually grieving. Tom O'Dyer had no relatives left, and acquaintances rather than friends. He had been part of the village, much the same as that 200-year-old holm oak on the green. Things would not be quite the same without him, but nobody would actually shed any tears. It was not the fact that he had died but the manner in which he had died that was shocking. She felt slightly sick and tried not to think about it. She stared at her creased service sheet without actually seeing the words, and wished that she had stayed at home.

The Reverend Bracton stood on the altar steps facing the congregation. A well-built man who seemed massive in his sombre black and white robes, balding, his features a typical ecclesiastical pink, a fixed cherubic smile on his face even when he attempted to mourn the passing of the latest dead, he seemed to look at everybody individually, searching them out, trying to make each feel guilty about something. He made Diane angry. Nobody in Pen-y-Cwm liked him, not even the few regular churchgoers, but they still paid reverence to him and were afraid in case they upset him in some way. The old story of fear of the priest, she decided – the Church could do no wrong. Hypocritical. Everybody remembered how they had demolished the old vergery a couple of years back after old James, the verger for the last thirty years, had died. OK, it was a hovel; no self-respecting person would live in a place like that. The vicar had devoted a whole page of the parish magazine to their proposed plans: sell the land and build a more modern vergery adjoining St Victor's, and appoint a new verger. And what had they done? Sold the bloody land for building (the figure was never disclosed but it was rumoured that the development company had paid in excess of £50,000 for that acre of land), and the Church had banked the proceeds. The next thing was the appointment of Hubert Spencer, the jobbing gardener, as part-time verger. Hubert wouldn't have moved out of his little cottage anyway, so Bracton and his colleagues were left rubbing their hands in glee. They had a new verger for a pittance, didn't have to build a new vergery after all and were left sitting on a pretty sum. A year ago they might have had to use it on the repairs to the church roof, but parishioners had donated generously and the target had been reached. Diane fidgeted with a tenpence piece in her pocket, begrudging the need to be seen putting something in the offertory. Bloody hypocrites!

Bracton was droning on about ‘our departed friend’, still smiling, padding out his address because there wasn't much to say about Obediah. He had been born in Pen-y-Cwm, lived there all his life except for a brief period of World War One service, and died in the village. Everybody knew how he had died (no, they weren't sure, they were only guessing at ticks), but the vicar was trying to kid them that it was a perfectly normal expiration of the human lifespan. Three score years and ten; Obediah had had a bonus, so he couldn't complain.

Les was standing with bowed head looking down at his feet. Bored. Hurry up and get it over with, it's all a façade.

‘Abide with Me’. No funeral was complete without that, so Diane went through the motions of singing. She looked up at the rafters for a change of scenery. And thought she saw something move.

Out of curiosity she stared. The sunlight slanted in through a stained-glass window and made multicoloured patterns on the faded whitewashed wall. An elongated crucified Christ gazed upwards, an expression of anguish on His bearded face as though He, too, saw and His eyes were staring because He was afraid.

‘… fast falls the eventide …’

Diane stiffened. Whatever it was moved again, a jerky darting movement along a woodworm-infested oak beam directly above; then stopped. A spear of claret light caught it, held it, turned its jet-black body blood red and made its tiny eyes glint malevolently. It was holding her gaze, returning it.

She clutched on to the back of the pew in front of her as she felt the insect's penetrating stare, its sheer hatred and evil. Its hard black body should have been no more than an inch or so in length, but it was blown up to three times its normal size. Curved horns gave it the appearance of a miniature Mephistopheles. A stag beetle!

She remembered studying them in biology at school. Somebody had gone out and caught a couple in the fields, brought them back in a matchbox and imprisoned them in a glass case in the lab. Poor devils, she had felt sorry for them, had even thought about secretly setting them free. They had not frightened her then, but this one, fifteen feet or so above her head, was beginning to. It had singled her out as though it recognized her, remembered her. You were the one who shut me up in a glass cage!

No,not me. I wanted to liberate you, but I never got the chance because Miss Dodds was suspicious and kept watching me like you are now.

Liar!

Please, it's true. But you can't be one of those because that was twenty years ago and those beetles would have died before now.

How do you know how long beetles live? You think they're friendly little insects, don't you? You think that Man has the right to crush one beneath his foot if the whim takes him.

She swallowed with difficulty. Oh, God, there were more of them up there scuttling along the beam, huge black stag beetles appearing suddenly as though the first one had summoned them. That's the woman I was telling you about. HER!

A line of them peered down, a kaleidoscope of different colours, green, black, blue or red sheens according to which reflection fell on them. Lined up on the edge of the rafter, they might fall off at any second, she thought. Or jump – directly on to her!

She could not back away in the crowded congregation; there was nowhere to flee.

‘Let us pray.’ Bracton's condescending tones irritated her. Damn him, he was looking at her too. As she sank down to her knees she nudged Les with her elbow.

‘Look … up there!’ Her hoarse whisper echoed in the silence between the lowering of bodies and the vicar commencing to pray for the dead. Heads turned in Diane's direction. ‘Beetles.’

‘Where?’ Les was straining his eyes upwards.

‘On the beam. Right above us. Beetles, huge ones.’

‘I can't see anything.’

‘They're there, all right, they …’ Her whisper died away. The beam was empty, not a stag beetle in sight. They might have been further back out of her line of vision. Or hiding in some convenient nook or cranny. Whatever, they had gone. ‘It doesn't matter.’ She felt foolish suddenly.

‘Let us pray for the soul of the departed, Thomas O'Dyer …’

Diane prayed, but not for Obediah. He was dead; they could not hurt him any more. She prayed for Les, and Emma, and all the people who had stayed behind in Pen-y-Cwm, that they might be spared this growing pestilence brought about by Man's foolishness and greed.

Diane had not expected her husband to follow the other mourners down to the graveside but as he had done so she could not very well desert him without drawing attention to herself. This was the most morbid part of all, the interring of the corpse, she thought. So basic, so physical. A yawning rectangular hole, the pile of grave soil partly hidden by a sheet of grubby artificial grass; pointless, they were going to have to remove it anyway in order to shovel the earth back in.

Somehow they found themselves right at the graveside. People had lingered, holding back because they did not want to witness the finale, as if to say: at least we were seen to be paying our last respects, but we don't have to watch the burial, just stand about. Several had grouped together and were conversing in low tones.

The Reverend Bracton stood back, that perpetual smile on his rotund features. There's no hurry, folks, take your time. Savour the situation. What a lovely day for a funeral.

‘There were beetles in the church.’ Diane spoke aside to Les. ‘Up on the rafters.’

‘There are always beetles and things like that in churches,’ he replied. ‘And woodworm. They were probably hunting for woodworm.’

‘But the sheer size of them, you should have seen them.’

‘I guess every species of insect in the vicinity has mutated. Why should beetles be spared the ignominy of Man's persecution of wildlife?’

‘It was awful. I think they were stag beetles, peering over the beams, staring down at me as though I personally was responsible for what happened to them. I thought for one moment they were going to drop down and attack me.’ And we still don't know for certain what nightmarish mutants killed Obediah.

The undertakers were busy fixing the ropes around the coffin, working methodically. For them it was just another job. There would be more in Pen-y-Cwm before this business was over, Diane thought. It was an ill wind that had blown them an unexpected bonus.

Les stiffened; something down in the grave had attracted his attention. The soil seemed to be moving of its own accord, heaving up from the bottom. Miniature avalanches, he tried to tell himself, but there was no showering of pebbles from the side; the whole structure was neat and firm, expertly dug.

And then he saw them, masses of wriggling brown snake-like creatures, swollen and bloated out of all recognition, writhing up out of the ground, entwining with one another, freeing themselves. Headless, eyeless blind reptilian horrors crawling in the bottom of the grave with terrifying purposefulness. Worms, hundreds of them!

‘My God!’ Diane saw them too, and clutched at his arm.

‘They're only … worms.’

‘They … they're trying to get out. Trying to climb the sides to get at us!’

The vicar fumbled and almost dropped his prayer book. His features had gone a deathly white. His hand moved, in a rare gesture of impatience to the men who had now secured the coffin and were starting to lift it. Hurry, get the grave filled in, bury them before they escape!

The undertakers took the strain, held the coffin in position began to lower it. Beneath it the worms were in a frenzy, trying to scale the sheer sides, then falling back, angry. Some were almost a foot in length, their bodies the thickness of young adders, lashing about in their fury. Some had managed to get a hold and were embarking on the ascent, slithering upwards.

‘Christ!’ One of the undertakers saw what was happening and loosed his hold on the rope. The coffin tilted crazily; the hemp, sliding fast, brought howls of anguish from the other three as it burned them. Then, with a devastating thump of finality, the cheap casket fell, wedged at an angle in the bottom of the grave.

An ashen-faced undertaker glanced at the robed man standing at the head of the hole, defiant yet pleading. Leave it like that, vicar. It won't hurt, Obediah won't mind. But none of us are going down there to straighten it. Let's fill it in before those buggers get out.

‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ Bracton was cutting short the final formalities. He pitched a handful of soil down into the excavation and signalled to the men to reach for their spades. ‘The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away.’

One of the worms was almost at the top. A spade thrust cut it in two and sent both halves threshing back down. The horrified watchers heard the severed body hit the polished woodwork and lash to and fro on the slippery surface. It wouldn't die, Diane realized, it would renew its efforts to climb out into the open again, living amputations gone berserk.

She closed her eyes and leaned her full weight on her husband, fearing she might faint as a nauseating thought impinged on her brain. If you chopped all those overgrown worms in half you wouldn't kill them, you would multiply them!

The undertakers were shovelling frantically. The crowd of mourners had moved back several yards; they wanted to flee, but some morbid instinct rooted them to the spot, passers-by who came upon a grisly road accident and were compelled to gloat. Surely the worms would burrow upwards, emerge into the open seeking human prey, they thought. But they were not swift, they could easily be out-distanced. Stay and watch, perhaps they'll get the undertakers. Or the vicar. Somebody, but not us.

The four men were dishevelled, sweating, obstructing one another in their urgency to fill in that hole. The coffin was out of sight now, with only the odd worm to be seen. The men were aiming a shovelful of soil and stones at anything that moved. Slow the pace, we've nearly done it. And if those little fuckers want something to feed on, they can busy themselves trying to get into the coffin and good luck to 'em. Feast on Obediah, you bastards.

The Reverend Bracton began to move away. The crowd parted to let him through, then fell in behind him. He tried to restore some dignity to the situation, prayer book clasped to his chest, raiment wafting and disguising his unsteady step. He looked straight ahead, fighting the urge to break into a run. What an unfortunate thing to happen at a most inopportune time, he thought. It was lucky it was only Obediah; it could have happened at Martha Vickers' funeral and her grandchildren might have had hysterics. He hoped there would not be another funeral soon. If there was, perhaps Clayton from Betheda might care to take the service. Or he could nominate Croft, the new curate. It all depended who died, how important they were. The Marsdens were having their boy buried at St Chad's in town. More prestigious. And there would not be any outsize worms in the cemetery there.

‘It was awful.’ Diane was shaking uncontrollably by the time they reached the Land-Rover. ‘They weren't like worms, more like venomous snakes in a pit.’

‘Don't let's think about it.’ Les pressed the starter. He had to use full lock to get out of the line of parked vehicles. ‘I'm going to start lobbying the Tribune again, see what publicity Wilkinson is prepared to give this business now, but unless I miss my guess Bracton will be urging him to play it down. I reckon there could be a lot of people changing their minds about burials and thinking about cremation after this afternoon. Not that it matters a damn what happens to your body after you're dead.’

They drove the rest of the way back to the Dingle in silence. The chestnut tree by the gate was totally devoid of foliage now, a stark giant skeleton with upraised arms, its twisted bole a hideous grimace. Look what they've done to me and they'll do the same to you before they're finished.

11

Andy Woodbridge was a source of trouble, both at home and at school. Mischievous but not wicked, a red-haired boy of eight with a deceptively angelic face, he seemed blessed with inexhaustible energy, much to everybody's chagrin.

Sue Richards had tried to be as tactful as possible when she wrote his end of term report. He lacked concentration, there was no getting away from that; every five minutes during lessons something diverted him and he had to be reprimanded. A resilient child, those awful ants had barely ruffled his composure. Afterwards he had picked a dead one up off the floor and ostentatiously plucked its wings off. Ugh! She suspected that it was he who had unhooked the chains in the boys' toilet and dropped them down the pan, something which had upset little Terry Evans so that he didn't go to the loo and messed in his pants instead.

Andy needed a lot of discipline, she added as a footnote. She had discussed this with his mother, Jenny. They had to be very careful in that respect, Jenny had emphasized, because if they went on at Andy over anything he usually wet the bed that night. Revenge, perhaps – he was capable of it. They had gone to see Doctor Barnett about the bed-wetting business but he had not taken them seriously. He would not prescribe a medicine because an inadvertent overdose could prove fatal; of course, if they wanted to buy one of those alarm devices that woke a child up the moment he began to pee, then that was up to them, but personally he would advise them to persevere and hope that the problem resolved itself. Which was easy for the doctor to say, because he did not have the task of changing the bed in the middle of the night.

But Sue was not going to be governed by a bed-wetting bogey every time Andy transgressed. He was a problem, he disturbed the rest of the class with his unpredictable antics. And she was determined to nurture an intelligence which transcended his misdemeanours. She would take a middle course and wait for him to mature, she decided. She concluded her report and hoped that Jenny would read between the lines. Andy certainly was no dyslexic, as Jenny had once hinted; he was behind in his reading because he pandered to the slightest distraction.

Jenny Woodbridge read the report and stuck it behind the clock on the mantelshelf, her pending file. It would be removed at Christmas, along with a sheaf of other dusty items of correspondence and unpaid bills, to make way for the Christmas cards. School reports counted for nothing; a parent was the best judge of a child, she considered. And, anyway, it wasn't all that important because when Andy left school he would follow in his father's footsteps and go straight on to the Wisemans' farm. You didn't need O levels to cut cabbages and drive a tractor, just plain common sense – and the boy had plenty of that. He would grow out of all his faults, the bed-wetting too. She hoped.

Jenny had put on two stone in weight over the last three years. Her pretty features had coarsened and her shapely legs had become almost cylindrical from her ankles up to the hem of her skirt. She solved that problem by wearing stretch jeans. A floppy loose top hid her large boobs. It was easier than dieting and, anyway, it was better to be fat and happy than thin and miserable, she told herself. And damn what other folks thought, it was none of their business.

She would have liked another baby, a brother or sister for Andy to play with, but that hope was fast fading; she certainly wasn't going to mess about with fertility drugs and end up with sextuplets, like that girl had who was making the news at present. Jeff, her husband, argued that they would probably make a fortune out of it. Fine, she had said, then you bloody well have 'em!

School holidays were a nightmare for her. She had to do all the everyday jobs and a few more as well; a Ryvita and cheese wasn't any good to Andy at lunchtime. Plus the fact he had to be kept amused and watched over. Sometimes in the summer holidays she would send him out into the orchard to play, but at present it wasn't safe with all these awful creepy-crawlies about. The Wisemans had lost most of their crops and there was a chance that Jeff might be laid off in the winter because there would not be any vegetables to cut for marketing. It was the hot weather that was responsible – Jeff had discussed it with Mr Wiseman – not these sprays that everybody was trying to blame. The rep from Roeder's was emphatic about that too; they would not dream of manufacturing anything that was harmful to the environment. All the same, she could not send Andy out to play. She did not trust him, not after what he had done the other week when Jeff's mother was over for the day.

It was a Sunday and they had been cooling off in the lounge after dinner.

‘Go outside and play, Andy,’ Jenny Woodbridge had said; the boy had seemed set on running that toy car up and down the floor all afternoon and it was beginning to get on everybody's nerves. ‘Go out and … well, play in the orchard.’

Strangely, her son had not been averse to the idea. He left his car where it was – Jenny made a mental note to pick it up in a bit – and walked towards the door. Then he stopped and turned back with a quizzical expression on his freckled face.

‘What is it, Andy?’ She was always apprehensive what the child might come out with; the other week his curiosity had been fired by a discussion in the school playground about how babies were born, or, to be more precise, how they were conceived. She held her breath. Her mother-in-law appeared to be dozing. But don't ask about penises again, Andy, please.

‘Mum …’

‘Yes, what is it? Now off you go and play.’

‘Mum, are woodlice poisonous?’

What a strange question! ‘No, they're perfectly harmless.’

‘Would they kill you if you ate one?’

Oh, Christ, she thought that had undoubtedly come from the Jones brothers at school; if there was anything rude or revolting they were in on it. ‘You can't eat woodlice.’

‘But if you did, would you die?’

She took a deep breath. ‘No, I don't suppose so. They're probably a source of protein, but I'd rather stick to beef and Yorkshire pudding. Now, off you go, us grown-ups need a rest.’

He had been gone nearly an hour. Jeff, his mother Doris, and Jenny had drifted into a pleasant doze until about half-past three, when Doris stirred and murmured something about a nice cup of tea wouldn't come amiss. Jenny had gone into the kitchen, and whilst she was waiting for the kettle to boil she looked out of the window to see what Andy was up to. She sighed with relief when she saw him up on the woodpile, picking up logs, examining them, then tossing them to one side. God knew what he was doing, but it looked harmless enough, she thought as she filled the kettle. Let's hope he stays out there for another hour.

He didn't. As she was carrying the tea tray back into the lounge he followed her in. His T-shirt was grubby and there was a tear in his shorts, the nice ones she had picked up at the jumble sale only last Saturday.

‘Andy, you're in a right mess.’ She was expected to reprimand him for her mother-in-law's sake. ‘What on earth were you up to clambering all over the logs?’

‘I was eating woodlice.’

‘No, you weren't, don't be so revolting.’

‘I was.’

Doris Woodbridge chuckled from the depths of her chair, ‘The things little boys say. But you mustn't tell fibs, Andy, because it's wicked. Now tell us what you were doing to get yourself in that filthy mess and rip your shorts.’

‘I told you, I was finding woodlice and eating them, Gran.’

‘I said you mustn't tell fibs.’

Jenny groaned to herself. Doris was going to make an issue out of this as usual.

‘Ignore him, Mum.’ She set the tray down on the coffee table and began to pour milk into the cups. ‘All little boys have fantasies. You can't really call them lies.’

‘Look, if you don't believe me.’

Andy stepped up to where they could all see him, opened his mouth wide and pointed. ‘See, what's that then?’

Doris leaned forward and pushed her spectacles back up on to the bridge of her nose. ‘It's a jelly baby or a liquorice allsort …’

Something dark was wedged on one of the boy's front teeth, a blob of goo that was half bitten into. Three pairs of eyes were focused on Andy's mouth, and with suspicion looming in Jenny's mind nausea followed. But she had to play it down. ‘Oh, it's a sweet or something. All a game, Gran.’

Andy pushed his finger into his mouth and touched the squashed thing on his tooth. It rolled off on to his tongue and revealed its dark grey beetle-like body as it wriggled. Andy gulped, closed his mouth, then opened it again to prove that he had swallowed it. ‘See, you didn't believe me, did you?’

Seconds later Doris gulped too and threw up a morass of half-digested roast beef and bilberry pie all over the lounge carpet.

Andy could be disgusting at times, Jenny mused as she set the twin-tub going. He had learned revolting infantile tricks from the Jones boys at school. Today he seemed almost angelic, but that could be deceptive, reversed in a matter of seconds. He was sitting on the floor looking at a crumpled Beano. Well, at least he was showing a desire to read, and she did not want to disturb him. The machine started up, vibrated.

Andy was bored. Holidays were always boring. There was nothing to do indoors and his mother had forbidden him to play outside. If he objected he would be sent up to his room. He reckoned he could escape from there by climbing out of the window and on to the coal shed roof. Then if he lowered himself over the guttering to full stretch he could fall to the ground unhurt, run off and play in the orchard, and hide where he wouldn't be found. His mother wouldn't smack him because she knew damned well if she did he would wet the bed tonight. So there!

But, as it happened, he did not have to go to such extremes in order to gain his freedom. Jenny Woodbridge decided that there were some more clothes upstairs that needed washing, and the moment he heard her footsteps in the bedroom directly above he darted for the door. With childish cunning he made sure that the latch did not rattle, closed it carefully after him and sprinted for the orchard.

Made it! He glanced behind him but there was no pursuit. All the same he had to make himself scarce, he thought. It was funny how all the undergrowth had died down. Only a week or two ago there had been a patch of Jerusalem artichokes close to the fence, a veritable jungle in which to hide, but now they were all gone, even the tough stalks. The nettles and docks had died, too. His father had sprayed them with weedkiller.

As he stood there undecided, knowing full well that he had to find a hiding place at the earliest possible moment, his gaze fell on the trunk of a fallen apple tree, a scrub tree that had been blown down in a gale longer ago than he could remember, and had lain in the rough grass and rotted. Now the vegetation around it was scorched, and crawling amidst the peaty rotting wood he saw the insects. Woodlice, without a doubt, but far bigger than those which he had found on the logs that Sunday when Gran was here. So fat they could hardly move, much darker in colour, and half as big as his thumb in size.

He stepped closer and peered at them. They were woodlice, all right. If he put his ear close to them he could hear them crunching up tiny particles of wood. He remembered what had happened that Sunday, stuffy old Gran throwing up all over the carpet and demanding to be taken home afterwards. Mum had been sick too, but she had managed to make it to the toilet, worse luck! Dad had been furious and slapped him across the face, but Andy had paid him back for that and peed the bed that night.

He had eaten the woodlice out of bravado and it had taken some courage, but actually it had not been unpleasant. They were crunchy, like nuts, and did not have much flavour, just a faint woody taste, which was only to be expected. And his mother had said they were full of protein; he had asked Miss Richards what ‘protein’ meant and she had said a food that gave you strength. So if he ate woodlice they would make him strong. And big woodlice would make him very strong.

He reached down and plucked one off the crumbling bark, and watched it crawl around in his cupped hand. My, it was a whopper! It was heavy too, he noticed, and it obviously did not like being handled, judging by the way it was starting to scurry around his palm looking for a way of escape.

Andy's eyes went back to the tree. There must have been at least a dozen bulging insects on that trunk; they had stopped, and seemed to be looking up at him as though searching for their mate. They certainly weren't afraid; they gave him the impression that they might have been angry at being interfered with. You put him back,boy, and go about your business. Or else.

‘I'm going to eat the lot of you.’ Andy spoke threateningly, gloating. ‘I ate some of your friends the other week and my Gran and Mum were sick, but it didn't make me sick. You're food, like sweets from Mrs Morris's shop.’

He began to pick them up one at a time, dropping them into his cupped hand. They wriggled and tickled, making him laugh. ‘I bet my Mum would throw up again. When I've chewed you all up I'm going indoors to show her before I swallow you.’

He began popping them into his mouth one at a time. He felt them squirm on his tongue and run beneath it. They tasted sour, bitter, not a bit like the last ones, but he wasn't going to spit them out, he resolved. Mum and Miss Richards had said that they were good for you. His mouth was full; it was like cramming it with dolly mixtures, and you only got the full flavour when you began to chew them.

Andy bit, crunched. And in that instant he tried to scream, only his mouth was full; it sounded like a strangled grunt. Sheer agony had him bent double trying to spit the woodlice out of his mouth; the pain was like when the dentist injected his gums prior to giving him a filling, only ten times worse.

He could feel them moving inside his mouth, a mass of them crawling on top of one another, angry like wasps, stinging vengefully. He coughed and heaved, but he couldn't budge them. He tried to scoop them out with his fingers, but jerked his hand away as they stung venomously. He bent forward because they were trying to crawl down the back of his throat.

He wanted his mother, fast; she would know what to do. As he ran blindly, head down, sobbing, one fell out, lodged inside his T-shirt and bit him. They weren't woodlice, they were wasps in disguise, he thought. You're not to go outside to play, Andy, because there's all sorts of nasty creepy things about that bite and sting … I'm sorry_3 Mummy, but please get them out of my mouth.

Jenny had not missed her son. She had put a pile of clothes in the washer and her thoughts turned to coffee, it was about time. Maybe Andy would like a glass of orange.

‘Andy!’ She shouted to make herself heard above the din of the old machine. ‘Would you like …’

The door flew open and Andy stumbled in. He was crying. His mouth was wide and it looked as if he had been stuffing himself with unripe blackberries or some other kind of wild fruit. Dark juice dribbled down his chin.

‘Oh, my God, child, what on earth …’

She pulled him to her, held his head back and began to probe inside his mouth, pulled out a living mulch that squelched and squirmed in her hand, and stung her. She shrieked, dropped the morass on her jeans, then delved for more. Oh, God, the stupid child had been eating those … She leaned across him so that her jetting spew missed him. Her vision darkened as if she might faint. She could not bear to touch anything that wriggled, but she had to if her son was to live. He was already choking.

Somehow she got them out, heedless of her revulsion and the pain in her fingers, then scraped them off on to the floor, where they squirmed away towards the skirting boards. She dragged him across to the windows, needing light to see if there were any still remaining inside him. None that she could see, except that his tongue was turning bluish and swelling, and his breath coming in great rasps. Merciful Mother, I think they're stuck in his throat too!

Turning him upside down, she slapped his back and shook him violently; it did not seem to make any difference. His eyes were closed, his body had gone limp like a rag doll.

A moment of panic, then she got herself back under control. She knew she should have insisted on Jeff having the phone installed. How often had she told him that one day there might be a terrible emergency when a 999 call could mean the difference between somebody living or dying? Like now.

‘There's always the phone box on the green,’ he had argued.

‘Yes, but that's nearly a quarter of a mile away.’

‘The Wisemans' is nearer.’

A few yards maybe, nothing much in it, she thought now. Cradling her limp son to her she staggered outside into the hot sunshine, then stood there a second or two undecided. The green or the Wisemans' farm?

It won't make any difference because he's already dead. No, he isn't, I swear he isn't! Checking him again, shaking him, sobbing, she broke into a stumbling run. He isn't dead. He isn't. He isn't.

Running, she took the short cut across the fields because the crops were all gone, heedless of things that crawled on her feet and stung her, creatures that dive-bombed her.

Looking for Jeff, she saw a distant figure two fields away. Trying to force her vocal chords to function as she ran, she managed a wheezing whisper.

‘Jeff … Jeff … our baby … he's hurt but he's not dead. D'you hear me … he's not dead!’

But nobody saw or heard her, a bulky figure that finally staggered to a halt and pitched forward, her burden rolling away from her, both of them lying there and staring up at the sun with sightless eyes.

Sometime towards mid-day the armies of insects came up out of the cracks in the parched soil and began to feed ravenously.

12

The sky over the Beacons had darkened and become leaden during the late afternoon; the build-up of cloud had an ominous yellow tinge spreading out from its core. The atmosphere was heavy, sultry so that Diane sweated, feeling uneasy and tense.

‘There's going to be a storm.’ She seemed to spend most of her time looking out of the window these days. ‘Maybe the weather's going to break, after all.’

‘I doubt it.’ Les had lost much of his optimism these past weeks. ‘They're forecasting scattered thunderstorms in the west, just like they did in 1976. It'll freshen everything up, but apart from that I can't see what good it will do because the crops are all gone, eaten away.’ It'll fill up the big pond and maybe bring those repulsive frogs back home; but he did not mention this to Diane, knowing she had probably already thought of it

‘They've set up roadblocks on the road out of the village.’ That was surely a flash of lightning in the distance. ‘It gives you a sort of trapped feeling.’

‘Not really, just a precautionary check, which is the sensible thing to do. All movement of livestock within a five-mile radius of Pen-y-Cwm has been halted, much the same as when there's an outbreak of foot-and-mouth or fowl pest. What they don't want is people taking animals out, and maybe ticks and lice with them. They want to contain the pestilence.’

‘Charming.’ She could hear the thunder rumbling now, a long roll that could be mistaken for an aircraft. ‘It beats me why they can't do something. All these horrible sprays that they've been using for years, and now they can't kill the mutants that were created.’

‘They're probably immune. We can only hope for a hard winter, and maybe get things back to some semblance of normality. But it's frightening when you count the real cost. We'll have to buy in all new seed, there won't be a seed left on the place to take. There's a lot of activity up at Roeder's, I'd say the government boys are in there taking the place apart. But it's too late, the damage is done. Roeder's scientists have come up with the ultimate horror and they're not clever enough to find the antidote.’

The storm was coming closer. The sun was blotted out now and the atmosphere was electric. The light in the kitchen flickered, it would surely go out before long, Diane thought apprehensively; the transformer on the Beacons was temperamental – a couple of claps of thunder and it gave up. She was fast developing a terror of the dark. It wasn't so bad when she knew that by a flick of a switch she could have instant light, but the prospect of unrelenting darkness in Pen-y-Cwm these days was an awesome prospect.

The wind gusted, rattling a loose window. She tore off a strip of newspaper, folded it and wedged it in the gap. Maybe that would help to stop some awful creepy finding a way indoors.

Shortly afterwards, heavy raindrops began to splat on the windows.

The full force of the storm hit Pen-y-Cwm around six o'clock that evening. The electricity had already been off for an hour and the heavy thunderheads brought with them a darkness akin to deep dusk. The rain bounced on the parched ground, creating gushing rivulets as it hurried on its way to a lower level. Dry stream beds were beginning to fill up; before morning they would become a raging torrent, overflowing.

The main street was awash. The drains were unable to take the sudden spate of water, several inches deep in places. And with it the current bore a mass of what could have been mistaken for small dead leaves, or maybe a mixture of seeds and shrivelled leaves. But there was nobody out in the height of the storm to investigate. Had there been, they might have recognized a mass of bodies, small yet swelled to three or four times their natural size. Greenfly, blackfly, caterpillars, a few ants that had been caught out in the open, beetles, woodlice – corpses swept to destruction as Nature rebelled at Man's interference with the balance she had developed since the dawn of evolution. Destroying what she could, she was venting her fury on Pen-y-Cwm.

The storm passed, but by then darkness had come as though to mask the vicious onslaught. The flooding began to subside and then, in its wake, came those creatures that had survived, those who thrived on dampness, their cold-blooded bodies revitalized. Slugs crawled up on to the stonework and began exploring doors and windows in an attempt to find a way inside the dwellings, clinging like limpets, bloated horrors with an insatiable hunger for human flesh, some perhaps remembering the old man, their victim on the green a week ago. Lizards and newts like armadillos were scurrying to and fro with quick darting movements.

And frogs, even bigger than before, cumbersome, flopping. Yet those cowering indoors could tell that the loathsome reptiles were incensed, by their deep, resonant croaking, a cacophony of evil and hatred for mankind. Their fury building up to a pitch, squelching and splashing in the water, able to venture at last from the restriction of the canal, returning to claim the countryside for their own, no longer the harmless occupants of ponds and streams. The kingbeasts of cold slime had become harbingers of death. Their armies were massed, and they were bent on destruction.

Ila Boyd breathed an audible sigh of relief when the lights came back on. She had almost panicked, at one stage when she parted the curtains to look outside and was confronted with a mass of revolting black shapes flattened on the outside of the glass. Ugh, slugs, and what a size, as big as those giant sausages they sold at the chippy in town, she thought. Horned heads, eyes that fixed her with their gaze and lusted for her flesh. She shut them out and put another log on the woodburning stove. The air had gone cold and its raw dampness ate into her bones, after weeks and weeks of an unrelenting heatwave.

Ila was small and slim, with short hair barely reaching the collar of her blouse. She had gone upstairs and changed into a pair of jeans, the first time she had worn anything other than skirts since the beginning of May. She wondered if the summer was over, in which case it would be back to the wet and cold, depressing hill fogs that sometimes did not lift for a week at a time, then the snow. There were times when she hated Pen-y-Cwm and this was one of them.

It would not have been so bad if George had been here more of the time. Although, on reflection, it would probably have been unbearable. After three years of marriage which wasn't really marriage at all, she was paying the penalty for jumping headlong into a relationship. Love at first sight, she had proudly told everybody in the first six months. A year of euphoria, and then everything had begun to go downhill and gone stale.

George would always have a host of business ideas, get-rich-quick schemes that all petered out eventually. It had been pyramid selling at the outset; he had lost the best part of three grand, but then his mother had died and left him enough to extricate them from the debts they had incurred, with a bit left over as well. So he had started up in a new line, those artificial logs in the printed carrier bag. Clever, certainly; they burned well, giving off a calorific heat almost the equivalent of coal, and were manufactured from wood shavings and sawdust compressed into blocks by a machine of George's own design. They did everything he claimed they did, but they weren't selling very well – because they were expensive, £2.50 a bag, whereas logs were £25 a ton. All they saved was the work of splitting and stacking. But George was not to be deterred, these were early days yet and the product had to catch on like every other commercial enterprise. Before the winter he would be marketing resin fire-lighters as a complementary item; by next autumn business would be booming. Just as pyramid selling was supposed to have done, but never did because the law clamped down and made things difficult. Which wasn't his fault.

IIa could have put up with all that – being hard-up, her husband's optimistic outlook and spending most of her time alone here in their cottage in Pen-y-Cwm whilst George stayed in town building up his business. Lately he only came home at weekends but, he promised her, by the spring he would be in a position to employ somebody and things would be different. Always tomorrow, next week.

She could have stood the loneliness if only she could have had one thing in life. A baby. When they had first got married George had talked abstractly about children. Of course they would start a family once they got on their feet, he had said. Except they never looked like getting on their feet, and now it had come out that her husband did not want any children. That had been a sickening blow, almost too much to take. So he had bought her a horse instead.

Yes, she had always wanted a horse of her own, ever since her teenage days when she used to help at the riding stables at weekends. It was the next best thing to a child, but not a substitute for one. Certainly not Chess, anyway! Gawky, an unpredictable misfit of a gelding with a damned silly name; perhaps a previous owner had decided he resembled the head of a chess piece. What was in a name, anyway? He had thrown her twice, and there had to be a third fall sometime, surely. She could never tell with Chess, sometimes he was as good as gold, other times he seemed intent on creating mischief.

But despite Chess, the loneliness of the past few months had merely served to make Ila desperate – which was why she had entered into a relationship with Bob Digby, who lived at Mill Cottage on the other side of Pen-y-Cwm. Bob was single, dark and reasonably good-looking. A rep for a fertilizer firm, he seemed to have plenty of money and spent more time at home than he did out on the road. He had managed to get her a few bales of hay for Chess last winter, and it all stemmed from that; she had taken to riding up the bridle path that ran parallel to the village and came back past Mill Cottage. If Bob's car was there then she lingered and looked for him; just for the sake of being chatted up, nothing else. It was so innocent, in the beginning.

Digby was three or four years younger than herself, and so self-assured, so much more mature than George, who got wildly excited over his latest scheme and talked of nothing else for weeks. She fancied the rep, but it would not go any further than that. You could bet your life he'd got a bird or two on his travels, she thought.

She had ridden by Mill Cottage late one evening a couple of months back, before the horror had begun in Pen-y-Cwm, when everybody was still in raptures over the hottest summer on record and water rationing was still only a very distant possibility. Bob's Peugeot was parked on the verge outside, and even as she looked for him he appeared in the doorway, his shirt an advert for whatever washing powder had given it that dazzling whiteness.

‘Hi, there.’ His teeth were even whiter than his shirt when he smiled. ‘Are you coming in for a glass of wine, or do you have to gallop home to a jealous hubby?’

‘George won't be back until Friday.’ She felt a twinge of guilt at the tone of her voice, a kind of and I won't weep if he doesn't show up Friday. ‘And he isn't jealous, he's too wrapped up in his latest scheme, making woodburner logs out of shavings and sawdust.’

‘Well, it takes all sorts.’ Veiled sarcasm, but she laughed with him. ‘Hitch that monster to the fence and he can do me a favour by mowing the lawn for me.’

It was during the second glass of Blue Nun that his hand found hers on the sofa and she gave it an answering squeeze. A third glass and she let him kiss her, responded by allowing his pushing tongue to enter her mouth. Her pulses were racing, her heart throbbing wildly; she had read in a magazine article that alcohol speeded up the heart. It was the wine, nothing else.

His hand moved up to her bosom and began to stroke her breasts through the thin material of her blouse. Of course she had expected him to do that, it was like starting courting all over again. She would have to be going soon; she'd enjoy it just for another minute.

Instead she let him push her back on to the sofa and undo her blouse – she almost apologized for not wearing a bra so that he could fumble with the clasp the way all lovers did. His tongue traced a damp patch all the way down from her neck, then began to flick at her nipples, stiffening them. Bob, I think I know what you're going to do next and I'm going to let you.

She would have helped him to undo the waistband of her riding jeans, except that he did not need any assistance, just a matter of lifting herself up a little so that he could slide them off. She suddenly realized, oh, Christ, I'm naked!

Ila watched him undress, then the slim dark body was revealed to her in its entirety, no trace of a rep's spare tyre, so lithe. Aroused, he knelt in front of her and let her take her time over a first viewing. Then he came in between her open thighs and lowered himself down on top of her, and she gasped aloud as he entered her.

In those few seconds before she got carried away, one thought was uppermost in her mind: I'm bang in the middle of the month, I'll conceive. But he made no attempt to break off and find a condom, just thrust steadily into her. Perhaps he'd had a vasectomy; she hoped he had not.

Throughout the ride home on the back of the rambling Chess she thrilled to the sensation of that liquid warmth in her crotch, her lover's semen trickling out of her. In a kind of dazed euphoria, she thought that if she was pregnant then she might try and kid George that the baby was his. Or maybe she would tell him the truth. It was early days yet; she'd consider it. She might not even be pregnant.

Over the next few weeks she was a regular visitor to Bob Digby's cottage. No pre-planning, no clandestine date, just riding to see if he was there and, if he was at home, going inside. Mostly they made love on the sofa, occasionally they used the bedroom, but Ila never stayed the night because the offer was never forthcoming. Her lover made no promises, never once phoned her at home. But if you're passing by anytime, just call in and we'll fuck. It was a straightforward arrangement; she knew where she stood. At least there were no tomorrows.

It was the night before Obediah's funeral that Ila had last seen Bob. Everybody was tense in Pen-y-Cwm, and for once Digby seemed uneasy. She noticed two suitcases standing in the hallway.

‘They're sending me up to Scotland for a week or two.’ The explanation came so naturally that she believed him; it would not have occurred to him to let her know if she had not called by. ‘The firm are trying to break into fresh territory and I've been chosen to suss it out for them.’

‘I see.’ Disappointment. There was a tightening ball in the pit of her stomach which had nothing whatsoever to do with the baby she was expecting; she had learned only that morning that her pregnancy test had proved positive. ‘I won't be seeing you for a bit then, Bob.’

‘Not for a week or two, anyway.’ He pulled her to him and kissed her as though it was his right.

Then they made love on the sofa, but she did not enjoy it – perhaps because she had got what she wanted out of Bob Digby and from now onwards copulation was a pointless exercise.

As she sat there listening to the thunderstorm dying away, Ila Boyd made up her mind that she would be leaving Pen-y-Cwm in the morning. Not just the village, but her husband too. And Digby. She would make a clean sweep and try to forget them all.

It needed some planning, though. First, she had to get to town. George had the car and it was too far to walk; also she had heard that they had set up a checkpoint on the road just outside the village. Like some eastern bloc country, she thought – Where are you going? What are you going there for? She did not want to have to answer questions; God, it was hard enough running out on a husband you didn't give a damn for.

She would have to go on Chess, she decided; there was nothing else for it. If she rode out towards the Beacons and then cut back to meet the main road about three miles from town, she would dodge the roadblock, and when she got to town she would leave Chess at the riding stables on the outskirts. Goodbye, old pal, I know you'll be well looked after but I might miss you a little. I won't miss George. Or Bob. Christ, he's a lucky sod, had everything he's wanted off me and he won't even have to pay maintenance. Not a penny. I'll make sure he doesn't ever know he's got a baby because nobody's going to share it with me.

There wasn't anything worth taking with her, she realized. They did not have any worthwhile material possessions, and what they did have George was welcome to. She found her handbag, the one with the shoulder strap, and put in it a few pounds of loose cash and her savings book. Once she had reached town and got rid of Chess, she would phone up Elaine in the Potteries and see if she could go and stay for a week or two, to sort herself out. Her parents' house was just too predictable; it would be too easy for George to find her.

It was a long night. She did not go to bed; it would only have been a waste of time because she knew she would not sleep. Instead, she sat in the chair by the woodburner and kept it fed with George's waste fuel; maybe he had found success at last, judging by the way the fire kept in, but it had come too late for her. Much too late. She smoked cigarette after cigarette, convincing herself that there was no way she was going to back down, aware of water dripping from blocked guttering on the roof outside; knowing that those awful slugs still adhered to the windows; waiting for dawn.

She must have fallen into an exhausted doze, because her first recollection of daylight was bright sunbeams slanting into the room through chinks in the curtains. The woodstove was cold.

She hurried, although there was no hurry, panicking in case something awful happened – like George suddenly returning home. She pulled the curtains open wide, and felt relief because there was not a single slug to be seen on the window. Outside, everywhere seemed to be drying up already; another hour and no one would know there had been a storm.

Just one cup of coffee, that was all she lingered for. She never ate breakfast, anyway. On the mantelshelf was a note where even George could not miss it. Ila could barely remember what she had written – something to the effect that she could not stand any more of this kind of life, she was going and would not be back. The usual farewell-hubby note: see ya. No, I won't be seeing you ever again, George. At least, I pray God I won't.

She dressed in jeans and a blouse again, the very same garments she had worn the night Bob Digby first seduced her. As an afterthought she added a duffel bag containing a rolled-up plastic mac. One of these days it might just rain again, but looking at the cloudless blue sky now, with the hot sun scorching down out of it, she found it hard to believe. Britain was a country of extreme weather conditions and no moderation, she thought.

She got the saddle and bridle out of the shed and lugged them all the way down to the rented paddock. For the last time, but she wasn't sorry, not a bit. Chess was standing at the far end, poor bugger, she commiserated, there wasn't even any grass left for him to graze. She whistled to him and he started to come towards her. He was obviously in one of his lethargic moods.

‘Come on, boy, we're going for a ride. I'm taking you somewhere where there will be some nice fresh grass for you to graze and you'll be groomed every day. Come on, I'm in a hurry.’

Chess wasn't in a hurry, standing ten yards away flicking his tail at an early morning swarm of flies that were doing their best to settle on him, bloated ones that looked as though their bodies might burst at any second and spew out whatever filth they had been gorging themselves on.

Ila approached the big gelding warily, her keen eyes scrutinizing his chestnut flanks. Thank God there weren't any of those big ticks on him. Maybe the rain had helped in that respect. She caught him and saddled him. He was like the weather in a lot of ways, she never quite knew what to expect from him.

She led him out into the lane before she mounted him, trembling with relief that everything had gone without a hitch so far. And there wasn't even a sign of any of those horrible creatures either; the storm must have drowned them all.

Down the lane past the Wisemans' farm, the Dingle nestled against its boundary. Now that fellow Earnshaw was in the same mould as George, intent on doing his own thing just to get out of the System, she realized. But Les was luckier because his wife saw things his way. There wasn't any point in fighting, Ila had decided long ago, because one way or another the System would wear you down.

Out across the fields, one last glance behind her, then goodbye Pen-y-Cwm. Christ, what a bloody place, she thought. It was like a tract of the Gobi Desert that had somehow been transported direct overnight: skeletal trees, arid wasteland. Last night's puddles were virtually gone, a mere hiccup in the long drought. Away to her left was the winding road, the most direct route to town; but she could see a line of cars, engines revving. The checkpoint.

God, the wood was eerie; even in winter she could not remember it being as desolate as this – bare branches, no golden carpet of fallen leaves, the bark stripped from some silver birch which would surely die before next spring. She smelled the unnatural cloying odour, the stench of death. Another thing, there was no wildlife to be seen, no wood pigeons clattering noisily out of the trees at her approach, no cawing of rooks overhead. Just an empty silence. Whatever made up the texture of an English countryside was gone from Pen-y-Cwm. She kicked the horse's flanks; the sooner she, too, was gone from here the better.

Ila was almost out of the wood now. Ahead of her the bridle path swung to the left, widened and then merged back into the patchwork of fields, the dead wasteland.

And that was when Chess reared up and whinnied in fear. It was all she could do to check him, jerking hard on the reins, trying to pull him back round. ‘You stupid bastard, what d'you think you're …’

It was only too clear why the horse had shied, why his eyes were rolling and his bulk shuddered with fear. Directly ahead of them, blocking the path, was a semicircle of giant toads!

For a few seconds horse and rider regarded the watching creatures with disbelief. They might have been an array of realistic garden ornaments, painted plastic toads that you filled with soil and placed on the side of an artificial lily pond; maybe nine inches high, too ridiculous to be real, fun ornaments or kiddies' playthings. And somewhere close by would be the gaudy gnomes and a spinning windmill – a miniature playground. Except for the sheer evil of it all!

Flat reptilian mouths pouted, opening and closing as they breathed, obese slimy bodies pulsing, eyes fixed unwaveringly on Ila; it was as though they had known she would come, that all they had to do was to gather here and wait, confident, uncanny, sure of their human victim.

Her mouth was dry, her reactions numbed. Escape would have been all too easy, she knew. She could wheel her mount and head back the way she had come; a fast walk would outdistance them. No, I don't want to go back. We can charge and break through, Chess can jump that lot from a standing start. But Chess had other ideas.

Ila felt his muscles tensing, his head starting to toss again. ‘Easy, boy, perhaps we can find a way round them.’

As always the horse was unpredictable. Suddenly he rolled. She felt herself starting to slide, kicked her feet clear of the stirrups and hit the ground hard. Next second she screamed as the animal's full weight crushed her legs; Chess struggled up and almost caught her with his flaying hooves as he bounded back the way they had come, with a frantic drumming that grew fainter and fainter.

Oh, Christ, my legs are broken! She sobbed with pain, but at least the gelding had not rolled on her body and harmed her baby. She tried to move but it was impossible. She lay there twisted at an unnatural angle, staring up at the sky, its blue darkening, streaked with black and red and shooting bright lights that seared her eyes.

There was a noise that reminded her of sea lions at the zoo when they flopped out of their pool on to dry land, a heavy wet smack. And another. The toads! She turned her head and saw them from ground level for the first time. Oh no, they were moving in on her, fat creatures that were almost too big to move, waddling and bulging, dribbling slime from their evil mouths. Eight of them in all, perhaps more outside her line of fixed vision; she fancied the creatures were ostracized by a Mother Nature who cherished only beauty, and had come direct from hell itself.

‘Get away from me!’ she screamed, and knew that she would become hysterical before long. On top of her own fate, and she dreaded to think what that might be, she wouldn't be leaving after all. There would be no new start. Just hospital, and back to the cottage for George to tend her in her recuperation. No Bob, he wouldn't come round to screw her, probably wouldn't even enquire after her. At the worst …

They were coming for her as fast as they could move, dragging themselves along the ground, their weird rasps vibrating in the still atmosphere. She could not even hear the distant cars now; it was as though everybody had packed up and gone except herself.

She tensed, tried to move once more and failed; then gave up. She didn't get hysterical, it was as though something inside her had snapped and made it easier for her. She wanted to be sick but couldn't. Her skin crawled, goose pimpled. Any second now …

That first touch was the ultimate in degradation and revulsion, so vile and evil, so slimy and cold. The toads were crowding in on her like malignant caricatures from an animated fairy tale gone wrong, princes turned into toads by an evil witch, the antidote a kiss from a fair lady. No!

Its mouth was only inches from her own; she could smell its stagnant breath as if it had emerged from a dank hole, a stink of excreta and everything that was foul. As it descended in search of her lips, she tried to twist her face away – only to find another one of them waiting on the other side. There was a freezing coldness on her bare abdomen where her blouse had ridden up, a slippery weight, in webbed feet scrabbling to find a hold.

It was like an old-fashioned ether mask being forced over her mouth by an impatient anaesthetist, a cup of cold death which she could not dislodge. Another was on her throat, waiting until her struggles became feeble. Everything in front of her eyes grew dark; something dragged her down into a bottomless pit full of nightmarish creatures which began to feed on her flesh.

And in her last conscious moments she screamed at them not to eat her baby.

13

The Reverend Bracton considered it his duty to the public to maintain an atmosphere of normality whilst at the same time trying not to detract from the horror surrounding them – an attempt to retain sanity and hope. And above all Faith. Obediah was dead and buried, and in no way would those awful happenings in the churchyard have any bearing on regular Sunday services. Matins and evensong would continue as usual. Last Sunday's church attendance had shown a depressing decline; the vicar hoped for larger congregations during a time of crisis. An optimist, he was expecting a better turnout this Sunday. There had been more deaths: Jenny Woodbridge and her child, Ila Boyd's riding accident. People would surely be turning to God now, or if they did not they never would.

There were nine people in the pews when he strutted through from the vestry, smiled broadly to God as he took his bow at the altar. It was the lowest matins attendance which he could remember, even during the peak of the annual holiday fortnight. Nevertheless, he must not let his disappointment show. It was the absentees who should feel the brunt of his disapproval, not this handful of undeterred faithful worshippers.

Bracton read out the number of the first hymn. Number 217: ‘0 Praise ye the Lord’. It gave him a breathing space; perhaps the strains of the organ reaching out into the main street would have a Pied Piper effect on the residents of Pen-y-Cwm. They needed God, they could not afford to spurn Him.

Memories of that macabre funeral still haunted the clergyman. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw those mutated worms wriggling their way out of the cold damp earth, lengths of living cold slimy evil; their kind had feasted on human carrion for thousands of years, scavengers of graves, but suddenly they had developed a taste for living flesh. At least, he thought so; there was nothing to substantiate his fears because they had not actually attacked anybody … although nobody knew for certain what had killed Obediah. Bracton shivered, wishing he could stop himself from thinking about it.

Miming the words of the hymn, he glanced covertly around, taking a brief mental roll-call of the congregation: Mary Wiseman, she always came, but Joe only showed his face three times a year, Easter, the harvest festival and midnight communion on Christmas Eve. Too busy on the farm, but did he not realize that without God his seeds would not germinate and flourish? Perhaps the pestilence had been sent as a retribution, a warning to the godless. Mary looked strained this morning, he thought, black rings around her eyes, pallid features.

Sue Richards had to set an example. The headmistress of a C. of E.-assisted school could not absent herself from church, even during the holidays. She was a dutiful girl and she had acted with great courage that day when the ants attacked the school. A good girl, he hoped that the education authority would give her a good posting when they closed the school, as they surely would next year.

The Winterbottoms, Henry, Margaret and young Kenneth, regular attenders even if the fourteen-year-old boy did fidget during the sermon.

Doctor Barnett. The GP was wise enough to know that he needed God's guidance throughout his healing. Even in the midst of crisis he had found time for worship.

And the Bensons, Eddie and Vicky. A slight frown creased the vicar's broad forehead. He had married them, his first marriage service on coming to Pen-y-Cwm, but the memory was marred by the fact that Vicky had given birth seven months later. They thought they had fooled everybody, himself included, and referred to a ‘premature baby’ whenever the subject cropped up. But they had not fooled their Maker; He was fully aware of their sin long before everybody else, and that was something they would have to account for when the Day of Judgement arrived. Not just sinning, but lying about it too. Bracton could have excused their absence.

Mrs Rolston, a widow in the mould of dear brave Martha Vickers. She had refused to desert her home when half the village had fled. Likewise she refused to desert her God.

Hubert Spencer, of course, standing behind his rack of hymnals and prayer books at the other end of the aisle. Not the model verger, but he meant well, was sincere, and did not even cost the upkeep of a vergery. Which compensated for his dirty fingernails and unkempt hair. But perhaps, with a little tact, that could even be rectified.

And finally Lawrence, the organist. An old stalwart, he had been playing here since he returned from the armed services in 1945. He had a prominent limp from a piece of flying shrapnel that had embedded itself in his leg, a memorial to his bravery that said more than the medal he wore on Armistice Sunday.

It was quite obvious that nobody else was going to turn up by the time Lawrence eased into the last verse. So sad, the Reverend Bracton thought. He had once launched a veiled reprimand from the pulpit about worshippers who arrived late for services. Perhaps that had been a mistake; better late than never, today at any rate. He sensed a desolation within the four walls of this beautiful little church, not just because of the meagre congregation, but because he did not even have a choir. His regular choirboys had all left for a safer place, gone with their parents into town until things returned to normal. He could not blame them.

‘Let us pray.’ For Ethiopia and its starving millions, somebody dying every minute of the day. He would let these villagers see how microscopic Pen-y-Cwm was in terms of world disasters. Two deaths a week on average; more folks than that died in the towns from natural causes. And he would mention the plagues of locusts in Africa and the countries of the third world, comparing their devastations with those of Pen-y-Cwm. You don't realize how lucky you are. He'd play it down.

Something in the dark recesses of his mind jogged his memory and brought earthworms to the fore again. Shut up! But the worms had not been in evidence at the Woodbridge funeral, nor Ila Boyd's. If they had been, then surely Croft, the curate from Betheda, would have mentioned it. Clayton had agreed to take services, but at the last minute he came up with a pressing appointment and delegated the duty to young Croft. The worms had almost certainly gone back whence they had come.

The secret of communal prayers, Bracton told himself, was to allow lengthy periods of silence during which individuals prayed themselves, not to give them a recitation. It was also a lot less work. And he needed more time to pray for nations with problems as massive as Ethiopia.

He could hear the insects buzzing loudly, angrily, bringing home to him the menace of a swarm of locusts. He jerked out of his reverie and glanced upwards, half-expecting to see a cloud of locusts darkening the large stained-glass window and smothering the crucifixion. He forgot about the worms.

Bracton stiffened. He felt his heart miss a beat; his vision blurred and then cleared. There certainly was something up there. He could see them plainly enough, a huge crawling mass of them on the central rafter that stretched across the breadth of the church midway down the aisle. So many of them that he could not make out exactly what species they were. Certainly not ants, they were too big and too black; not caterpillars, because they were the wrong shape. Too short and fat for earwigs, and they weren't reptiles either. Not worms, thank God!

The congregation were obviously totally unaware of the milling multitude up above, directly over Mrs Rolston. If they slipped and lost their footing they would fall directly on to her. Or if they jumped and attacked.

The Reverend Bracton just knelt and watched in stupefied terror. O Lord, please banish them from this, Thy house, as Jesus banished the moneylenders from the temple. And as if by a divine inspiration the vicar recognized the intruders – stag beetles! Too large, but in Pen-y-Cwm everything was too large. They were harmless, surely. But supposedly so were many of the species that had attacked humans recently.

Horned devils in jet-black armour plating, regiments of them. Unless you looked up from a certain angle you would fail to spot them; they could have been up there unnoticed for weeks, he realized. Nobody except himself had heard them, so engrossed were the members of the congregation in their prayers. He must warn them, disturb their personal intercourse with God.

Bracton opened his mouth, his thick lips moved, but a sound only came from them as if he was clearing his throat, a habit which he had developed over the years. These people knew it well, they would not take any notice. I say, there are beetles in the rafters, stag beetles! It sounded silly. Except in Pen-y-Cwm, where the figments of nightmares became stark reality. Perhaps these creatures were harmless, after all. Surely God would not permit such an atrocity to take place in His house? But he had allowed those awful earthworms to manifest themselves in consecrated ground, although they had not actually hurt anybody. That was because the undertakers had buried them in the nick of time.

A jumble of contradictions swamped him, had him struggling again for speech. Take a deep breath, count up to ten, the way you do when you feel that speech impediment coming on. One, two … four, five … eight, nine … he counted. Too late!

The beetles showered out of the rafters in a living avalanche as though in answer to some co-ordinated command, a fall of black bodies resembling coal slack out of a chute; hard bodies that smacked down on polished woodwork, rolled into heaps and came alive again.

They hit Mrs Rolston's bowed body with force and knocked her sideways with their weight; they were swarming all over her before she began screaming.

A moment of shocked silence as the others were jerked out of their prayer-filled reveries, from tranquillity to terror at the unbelievable revulsion all around them, the crawling insects that had a sole purpose – to attack all human life!

The Winterbottoms grabbed their overweight son and tried to shield him with their own bodies, but the rearguard of the black tide launched an assault from behind, bending them double over the pew in front.

Doctor Barnett was using his hymn book as a weapon, clutched in a spread of arthritic fingers, bludgeoning at the beetles as they climbed on the seat. He felt one begin to squash, its gruesome body crushing then inflating again, wriggling furiously from beneath the squat volume, leaping for the gnarled hand that had struck the blow. The doctor shouted his pain aloud and tried to knock his attacker off, but its feet were like tiny fishhooks embedded in his skin. Others were coming up his legs, inside and outside his trousers, doubling him up in abdominal agony.

Mary Wiseman tried to flee, but they caught her in the aisle, clustered over her eyes and stung her into instant blindness so that she stumbled into a pew and fell. The Bensons were trying to leapfrog the seats. Eddie managed just three; they overwhelmed Vicky on the second.

The organ was stuck on a discord, Lawrence's body sprawled across the keyboard in a final attempt to summon help, sounding a siren of death as they tore at his flesh with their pincer-like claws.

Only Sue Richards made it to the door. Even she could not understand how they had missed her as she slowed her flight in front of Hubert Spencer and yelled at him to run. He merely stared ahead as though hypnotized, a kneeling figure who might have been relying upon divine rescue, putting to the test the faith which he had followed all his life. Mouth agape, eyes vacant, he muttered mute incoherents until the beetles reached him.

Sue yanked the door open, then looked back just once. Coward, deserter, you're running out on them. Go back and help. She almost did, except that her logic overruled her loyalty. No way was she going to be able to do anything, she would simply be sacrificing herself needlessly. She'd run for help.

As she reached the lychgate she was suddenly aware that one of the beetles was on her arm, a horned attacker the size of the Bambi stapler on her schoolroom desk. The pain of its sting threw her sideways. She tore at it, shredded her own flesh as she hurled it to the ground and stamped hard on it. She felt it give, then spring back. She leaped for freedom, stumbled down the cracked steps and out into the main street. There was not a soul in sight. She yelled, and began to run again.

The Reverend Bracton had witnessed the massacre from his elevated position above the choral steps. Cowering, trembling, no longer searching for his lost speech because he did not want the beetles to know he was here. Perhaps they would not see him, would slaughter and return to their hiding places, he hoped. He tried to pray, but it was not easy; his faith was no longer steadfast. Please, Lord, don't let me die. It could have been worse; they might have been worms.

They had seen him and they were coming for him, a tide of black that had flowed and ebbed, turned and flowed again, washing up against the steps below the pulpit, splashing over it. They were seething with the angry buzzing of a disturbed beehive; behind them lay human bodies, bleeding and disfigured. Spencer had gone down beneath his hymnals and prayer books; the rack had overturned on him and just an outstretched unmoving hand was showing.

Suddenly Bracton discovered that his limbs would move with a new agility, in spite of his bulk. His cassock caught on something and he tore it off, blundering for the vestry door parallel to the altar. But the giant insects had forestalled him, out-thought him with their macabre new intelligence. A pincer-movement had made a detour with military precision to cut off his escape route. Oh, God. He could even read the gloating in their expressions as they held him at bay and waited for the rearguard to take him.

A light, a flame, distracted him – the altar candle, burning white wax, its flickering flame dribbling molten tallow down the solid-silver holder. The Voice of God, and the Reverend Bracton heard it in his direst hour. That benign smile came back, or had it ever really deserted him? His fleshy outstretched hand grasped the candlestick, holding it aloft in the manner of a persecuted saint confronted with overwhelming odds, a Christian in a den of lions who had suddenly been handed a flimsy sword. I challenge you in the name of God!

It did not stop them; even the dancing flame thrust at their advancing legions did not slow their final attack. Their glittering bodies seemed immune to fire as they swarmed up on to the outstretched arm and on to the fleshy body beyond it.

Bracton screamed as he fell, and called upon God for one last time. The candle toppled from the holder as it struck the stone floor and rolled; the flame flickered, almost went out and then flared up again, catching the overhanging altar tapestries.

A smell of singeing, a spiral of dark smoke, and then flames were leaping up the hanging material with such gathering ferocity that even the stag beetles shied away. They scuttled to a safe distance, deserting the writhing obese body on the floor, a man who now screamed to God not for help but for swift death that he might be spared the torture of a squirming horde of flesh-eaters devouring his living body.

Sue Richards had run into the road and stopped a passing police car, blurting out a disjointed plea for help. Nowadays anybody was prepared to believe just about anything in Pen-y-Cwm.

The constable radioed, but it took several minutes for assistance to arrive, a red and white patrol car followed by the now familiar bright yellow pest control van. Even as they drew up outside the lychgate, thick black smoke was pouring from the windows of St Victor's church, the stained-glass crucifixion scene alive with leaping flames, the face of Christ tortured agony, no longer forgiving.

Three policemen and the pest officer stood and watched, then in accordance with the regulations placed some rubber warning cones in the road. Nobody in their right mind would risk going in there, she thought. The fire brigade was on the way; hoses would have to be played on the inferno from a distance until it was damped down. If anybody was inside, then they were surely dead.

A small crowd gathered, frightened residents come to witness the latest catastrophe, keeping their distance because of the thickening smoke pall that was now obscuring the overhead sun. Inside the church, blazing beams crashed down, and if you listened hard enough you thought you heard screaming amidst the crackling inferno; screams that were somehow not screams, more of a high-pitched angry hissing, a shrill shrieking that might just have been the flames, but deep down you knew it was not. It was reminiscent of bonfires inadvertently made atop an ant hill that burned the occupants alive in their homes. Or cremating a hibernating hedgehog that had crawled into the sticks for shelter.

It was after dawn on the Monday morning before the combined fire brigade finally overcame the blaze and began to sift through the ashes. Burned human corpses, ten of them, unrecognizable, identified later only by jewellery which they had worn or, failing that, by their dental records.

Of the stag beetles there was no trace.

14

Franklin Roeder crushed out a half-smoked cigarette and lit a fresh one in almost the same continuous movement. Another meeting in his office again. Life was one continual round of meetings these days: conferences, press façades in which he learned by experience to answer the wrong questions in the right way.

He had met ADAS daily for the past fortnight, Sundays included. Now it was persecution, the government yielding to public pressure, a witch-hunt. They needed a scapegoat, he thought, another Bhopal, to be seen to be taking action. And they still had not come up with a firm answer on DD7. They were awaiting further tests; it was like going to the doctor and being passed on to a specialist, who in turn sent tests to the lab. It was called passing the buck. But Roeder knew that he had to control his anger and use guile; cool it.

Typical bloody civil servants, middle-of-the-road suits, briefcases; formulated features that were silhouettes wearing heavy-rimmed glasses. If he tried to recall what they looked like half an hour after they'd gone, he wouldn't be able to. Board a commuter train, and there were dozens of them. Maybe civil servants were all related, Roeder thought wryly. All the same, he had to go along with them because they would get their way in the end. Evason and Rolt – he had a job remembering which was which.

‘We're concerned about your methyl isocyanate store.’ The one Roeder thought was Evason spoke nasally, expressionlessly.

‘It was passed last year.’

‘Two and a half years ago, in fact.’

Christ, Bhopal was becoming a timemark, a before-and-after milestone in the chemical industry, he realized. ‘Maybe. Without looking up the files I can't say for sure.’

‘Your safety precautions are no longer valid, Mr Roeder. Out of date.’

‘I wasn't aware of the fact. It was inspected whenever you say it was and I haven't heard a word since.’

‘Well, our technical inspector reports that it is a risk. I'm afraid we shall have to neutralize it until work complying with the latest regulations has been carried out.’

One below the belt, but they had to kick his arse over something, he thought. The only visible indication of the anger seething inside Franklin Roeder was the throbbing of his temples. He flicked a length of ash at the ashtray and missed. ‘I see. That means there are at least three major insecticides which will have to cease production in the meantime, at a considerable financial loss to the company.’

‘Yes.’ Not even a token apology.

The bastards were enjoying every minute of this, he told himself. Perhaps in a way they felt it was their contribution to an apology to the people of Bhopal. We're sorry so many of you died, but it's too late to do anything about that now so we're clamping down on Roeder Agrochemicals. You've never heard of them? Well, neither have millions of others, but we're making sure there isn't another disaster. Actually, there is, of a different kind; we're just coming to that.

‘Your formula DD7, which is still undergoing extensive ministry lab tests …’ A pause – wait for it, get an edge. Evason's expression was still deadpan. ‘Yes?’

‘I'm afraid if the public knew what was in those cages in your lab there would be an outcry. You might find yourself under siege from one of the animal rights groups. Certainly the RSPCA would kick up a stink. It would make the front page of every sensational daily.’

‘The public have already seen the creatures.’ Roeder waved a hand towards the window. ‘Out there, in the countryside.’

‘Yes.’ It was Rolt who spoke this time. ‘Out there is one thing, but five times their natural size and straining their skins in a glass box is quite another, in the eyes of the layman.’

‘They're not suffering, just gorging themselves.’

‘They're supposed to die, aren't they, Mr Roeder?’

‘A number have. The others won't last long.’

‘They've lasted a lot longer than they should have. DD7 is a unique formula, admittedly, but it lacks the … er, killer punch, so to speak. If the insects that were affected in their natural habitat had grown and died, nobody would have been any the wiser. That's the problem, they're not dying!’

‘You've read our report.’ The one Holden rewrote, he added to himself.

‘Yes, it's impressive. It remains to be seen how ours matches up to it. That is the criterion. At the moment it looks as if it will be withdrawn from our schedule of future permitted pesticides. People have died as an indirect result of its testing. There will, of course, be a lengthy enquiry into the initial testing. A board has already been nominated for that purpose.’

The hand that stubbed out the cigarette trembled slightly. But Roeder always believed that attack was the best form of defence. ‘Why don't your boffins kill the mutants, then?’

‘It isn't easy’ – a roundabout admission of failure to date – ‘we cannot spray indiscriminately; further side effects could result.’

‘So in the meantime DD7 is shelved and I'm to lose my methyl isocyanate plant.’ Roeder's brow knitted as he stood up and walked across to the window. ‘The innocent are punished. Great. The formula was tested in accordance with our regulations and yours, all perfectly above board.’

‘If the testing was according to the regulations laid down, Mr Roeder.’

Roeder's expression was grim. He turned away so that the other two could not see it. Holden was the weak link; if he shouted off his mouth it wouldn't be just the cyanide plant and DD7 that would get the chop, a week from now this place would resemble a provincial cinema gone bust. But Holden wouldn't dare – they had thrashed all that out.

‘We'll see you tomorrow.’ Roeder did not know which of them had spoken. It was difficult to distinguish between their voices. Official automatons, he knew they would go back home and write more reports according to their bloody book of rules.

He went back to his desk and lit another cigarette.

Roeder looked up as the door opened, an expression of annoyance on his face. Phelps always knocked before entering, even if he was the Chief Research Chemist. But it wasn't Phelps; it was Holden, advancing into the room, kicking the door closed behind him.

‘I didn't hear you knock, Holden. I'm busy, see me tomorrow.’

‘I have to see you tonight, Mr Roeder.’ There was something threatening about the young man's posture, more than a defiance, a flushed anger, an obsession that made his eyes seem to stand out, his cheeks white.

‘Well, it had better be quick.’

‘You lied about the testing. You made me lie too in the report. The applications, the globules, the drift, the …’

‘Shut up and get out. We've gone through all that already.’

‘The ADAS lab tests will prove what I wrote was a lie.’ John Holden clenched his fists and there was despair in his voice. ‘They'll find out all right, it's only a matter of time. Why do you think the tests are taking so long? Because they've found something already that doesn't fit in and they've got to check it out. They …’

‘Get out!’

‘I'm going, and I won't be coming back. But you'll damned well hear me out first, Roeder!’

Roeder stared, opened his mouth and closed it again. There was a niggling little ache starting up in the depths of his stomach, filtering down into his bowels. He felt slightly sick, too. The worm was turning. The boy was going to be heard at any cost.

‘I'm going to tell them.’ Holden's lower lip trembled and he was starting to shake. ‘I'm not having any part of this. I'm going to tell them that I lied. Tomorrow.’

Roeder did not reply, which surprised even himself. In a way he knew that anything he said would be futile, and rage was merely a waste of mental and physical energy. There was just a narrowing of the eyes as Holden turned round, went out and closed the door behind him. He did not even reach for another cigarette. The outcome was inevitable, this past hour he had realized that only too well.

Holden left the research centre, drove his old K-registered Mini slowly back through the village and parked iron the verge outside his rented cottage. Tomorrow he would probably be leaving Pen-y-Cwm for good.

He went inside and closed the door, then leaned up against it. He wasn't sure whether he was going to speak to the ministry men or not. An hour ago he would have done; he should have approached them before they left. He did not usually have that kind of courage – it had been spontaneous, brought on by anger and fear; fear of what they would do to him when they found out. His was the proven lie, the written word. His signature was at the foot of the page; he carried the can.

He had contemplated suicide a few nights ago. Maybe if he had had a gun handy, or something instant, he would have gone through with it. He didn't know. The very thought of slashing his wrists would have made him faint before he even used the knife. Drowning? He was terrified of water, a confirmed non-swimmer. Hanging was brutal, slowly throttling yourself to death, and he could not stand that. An overdose? Maybe, but he would have had to go into town to the chemist's to get something. There wasn't even an aspirin in the cottage. By the time he got back he would have funked out.

No, he wasn't going to take his own life. He thought about running, packing a few things now and going straight out to the car. But he knew they'd find him; unless you were an experienced criminal you didn't stand a chance, not an earthly.

Just two choices were open to him: shop Roeder and take what was coming to him, or keep quiet and pray that by some miracle the DD7 report would not be exposed. In the end he decided that the only way he would ever be able to live with himself again was by telling them everything. Perhaps he ought to write it down and hand his confession in in the form of a letter. It would save a lot of embarrassment; he was sure to get a fit of the stutters and show them what a weak fool he was.

Funny, he thought, no matter who you are you've got a skeleton in the cupboard somewhere, some bigger than others. A weak personality had been his downfall. In a way he enjoyed being cowed, being the whipping boy, which was why he had never made it with girls. He wished that he was a girl, that he could submit meekly to a strong men and be humbled.

He knew he was a transvestite. Only once had he ever let his guilty fantasies run riot, and that had been during a university vacation when he'd gone back home. His parents and his sixteen-year-old sister Donna had gone out one evening. John could have gone with them, but he had declined and stayed at home. Not for any reason at the time, just that he didn't fancy going out.

All alone in the house he had had a sudden idea, one that both thrilled and frightened him. Donna was roughly his own build, and upstairs in her room she had a wardrobe full of dresses, drawers crammed with underwear and bras, tights, shoes … an array of cosmetics in the bathroom.

Oh, God, he wouldn't dare. Suppose they all came home early and caught him. They wouldn't, they never returned before midnight and, anyway, they were having a meal at the Browns', and that was inevitably a late session.

He stripped naked, left his clothes strewn on the landing, crept furtively into Donna's room and began to explore her wardrobe. He chose a short summer dress, scarlet with flowery patterns all over it, and laid it out on the bed whilst he found a white bra with pants to match. The bra fitted him when he had padded the cups with cotton wool he had found in the bathroom cupboard, but he had trouble with the flimsy pants as he tried to tuck his erection out of sight inside them.

A game of dressing-up, he rationalized. Didn't everybody play dressing-up at some time in their lives? Maybe, but not quite to this extent, he admitted. When finally he looked at his reflection in the full-length wardrobe mirror – he had resisted the urge until he considered that the transformation was complete – he knew that for the moment, anyway, he was a woman. He had female feelings, thrilled to the touch of his fingers as they stroked his thighs beneath the dress, felt at his breasts and trembled with excitement such as he had never known before.

Then he lay on the bed, closed his eyes and drifted into heavenly sensations. He was determined not to touch himself, because if he did then he would become male again and that would spoil everything. So he just let himself drift, let the sensuous feelings swamp him until finally he was writhing in sheer ecstasy and submitting to a naked muscular man who forced him to do his bidding, raped him rather than seduced him.

Sometime later he arose and took off Donna's clothing, and that was when his euphoria left him, for the nylon underwear was saturated with sperm and he knew that there was no way he would ever be truly female, except in his imagination.

He hung the dress back in the wardrobe, stuffed the bra in the drawer and wrapped up the pants in a paper bag to dispose of later. Then he climbed into bed and sobbed himself into a dreamless sleep.

Now he had that same feeling again, a desire to step out of the body of John Holden and into female form and clothing, to escape, to leave no trace for those who would surely seek to track him down. He knew it was only fantasy, but it would help ease the agony for a brief period.

He did not have any female clothing this time, but did it really matter? In the darkness of his bedroom he could assume the naked body of the opposite sex and create those sensations again. A game, but a very important one that was vital to his needs, his sanity. And perhaps in the morning things would not be so bad.

He opened the bedroom window and pulled the curtains across. The atmosphere was stifling now that the storm was long gone and the humidity had returned. The walls still retained the heat of the daytime sun like oven bricks.

John stood by the side of the bed and smoothed his hands over himself; his breasts were well-formed, his thighs shapely with no ugly protrusion in between them. He had a desire to switch on the light and view himself in the mirror, but he fought it off because that would destroy everything. The last thing he wanted now was reality; there would be enough of that on the morrow.

He lowered himself on to the bed. Oh, if only he had some scented deodorant, or perfume of some kind, or maybe a bottle of sweet-smelling body lotion to rub into his flesh, he thought. But he had none of these, he had to rely on his fantasies. They came slowly, cautiously, having to force their way into his troubled mind. Don't touch yourself there whatever you do. He eased his thighs apart and drew his legs up, a mute invitation to the shadows to come and take him. He told himself that those delightful sensations in the lower part of his body were not brought about by the pulsing and straining of an erection but by the expanding and contracting of his vaginal passage as it craved a male penetration. And eventually it should have its wish. He fought hard to call up the mental vision of that muscular dark-skinned man, the one who would take him by sheer force.

His lover was a long time coming, but at last he was there, kneeling astride John Holden, his strong hands pinioning the student chemist to the bedsheets. John gave a cry of delight and stretched his legs still wider, kicking his feet high in the air. Take me, oh, Jesus God, rape me!

The other's touch was so real now, scraping John's skin, sharp fingernails gouging up and down it, goose pimpling the flesh, scratching, hurting. Painful but wonderful. Doanything you like to me!

The dark man obviously intended to do just that. He was feeling John's neck, titillating his imaginary bosom, exploring his naval, making him writhe and gasp his pleasure aloud. There was a sort of itchy feeling in his pubics. Goon, give me more; no, that's not my penis you're feeling because I don't have one. Go in my vagina, please!

Something crept inside him; John knew that it wasn't in his vaginal passage because outside his fantasies he did not have one. It was his anus – but it would do. A penetration anywhere was beautiful.

Suddenly this one was not. It stung hard, making him rear up and grunt with pain. Something was stuck up his bottom, something that squirmed and stung as it forged a passage up towards his bowels.

And in that same moment came the awful realization that his body was actually being scratched and stroked by a mass of creatures with tiny hard legs crawling over him. They had crept upon him in the darkness and caught him at his weakest moment, when his fantasies were building up to a peak. Mental masturbation suddenly erupted into stark terror and he snatched for the light pull.

Not just his nude body but the whole room was seething with them, thousands, millions of long dark-brown hairy creatures with numerous legs, their wriggling bodies coming up on to the coverlet in a never-ending stream. Earwigs!

John Holden rolled off the bed and sprawled headlong on to a living carpet of hard-backed insects. He heard several crunch beneath his weight with tiny squeals of rage. They'd got his crotch, were swarming on to it, viciously attacking the flaccid tender flesh. You can have that, I hate it!

He made it to the landing, fear lending him the necessary strength to stagger out. The insects were covering every square inch of his flesh, attacking and fighting amongst themselves for a morsel of human meat, blinding him so that he pawed and clutched at his eyes. Which was why he missed the top step.

A sudden sense of weightlessness transcended pain for a few seconds, a flipping of the heart like falling in a dream. He was floating in slow motion, drifting in space. Taking the earwigs with him.

Turning, and falling again. He was not even bracing himself for the impact because he was sure he would land softly, gently. Then he would get up, open the front door and …

He struck the hall floor below with a shuddering, bone-shattering force, a cast-off china doll smashing on impact. Blinding, sickening lights flashed before his eyes; pain robbed him of all other feelings, agony that set his brain on fire. His head was twisted to one side. He could not get it back again; it was lolling across his shoulders.

John Holden knew that he was going to die, as surely as if he had gone ahead with a pre-planned suicide bid. Never mind drowning or hanging, just jump from the top of the stairs and break your fucking neck. Even so, it wasn't instantaneous. The pain was excruciating but he knew it couldn't last long. Those bloody earwigs were thick inside him now; he was trying to heave them out of his lungs, but they dug in with their sharp little feet and let him retch in vain. They were eating his guts out whilst he still lived, warm human tripe for supper. He thought his genitals were gone, but he didn't mind that.

Finally he sank into oblivion, drifting away. And after he was dead the earwigs deserted his body, as though corpse flesh had no appeal to them, that they liked their meat warm with the blood coursing hotly through the veins.

But the slugs which came later in the night had no such preference. They climbed the stonework, eerily sensing an open window, oozed over the sill and into the bedroom, and uncannily headed for the stairs and fastened their cold black bodies on to the flesh devastated by the earwigs.

The slugs fed greedily, noisily, biting and slurping, their bloated bodies swollen still further as they gorged themselves on flesh and blood. An obscene repast, a nocturnal reptilian banquet. And for the moment Franklin Roeder's secret was safe.

15

The village hall was half full by six o'clock on the evening following John Holden's death. Almost everybody who had stayed behind in Pen-y-Cwm turned up, congregated within the four wooden walls, mankind's gregarious nature in times of fear manifesting itself. If we stick together, we'll be all right. Safety in numbers. The church was gone, and now they turned to Les Earnshaw. They needed a leader; perhaps he had been right all along and they should have listened to him earlier. Perhaps even now it was not too late. Somebody tell us what we have to do.

A uniformed policeman stood unobtrusively at the rear of the room. He had checked the place over and made sure all the windows were tightly shut. After what had happened in the church, they could not take any chances. Public gatherings were risky, but it would be difficult to stop them. And inadvisable.

Les Earnshaw was up on the stage, where the only furniture was a chair and a table piled with pamphlets. He was seated. It was damnably hot in here, he thought, and he felt out of place in a new pair of cords and a spotless white shirt. On any other occasion he might have experienced stage fright, but not over this issue. Somebody had to stand up and say what had to be said, and in the end it had been left to him.

‘We all know why we're here.’ Of course we bloody do. He glanced down at Diane in the front row and received a smile of encouragement: go to it, boy. ‘We're fully aware how and why this situation has arisen. Because Roeder's experimented with some superspray and it got out of hand and nobody knows how to put it right. The authorities seem to be adopting a wait-and-see policy, even at this stage. There was a paragraph in the papers yesterday to the effect that a lethal methyl isocyanate plant of Roeder's had been closed down for safety reasons. Christ, they've had that plant for four years now and nobody batted an eye; then came the Bhopal disaster, and with over two thousand people dead in India they suddenly woke up to the fact that it could happen elsewhere in the world. So what do they do? They begin stringent checks everywhere, but here's a golden opportunity to placate a scattered community, close Roeder's cyanide plant and be seen to be doing something positive. But that's got nothing whatever to do with these giant killer insects and amphibians. It's a timely red herring to distract us and keep us happy. Until somebody else gets killed.’

An angry murmur rippled through the audience.

‘Roeder's has to be closed down for good.’ Les raised his voice. He would have thumped the table, except those piles of leaflets would probably have showered on to the floor. ‘There can be no compromises, no half-measures. OK, the damage is done and we don't yet know where it's all going to end, but let's start by shutting down the experimental station. Let's get the message over to the rest of the country.’

‘Hear, hear.’

At least they were showing some response, he thought. The trouble with the average person was he was apathetic, tut-tutted in horror and sympathy when he read his morning paper but it ended there. Now he had to be roused, made angry. Made aware. Les Earnshaw recognized a familiar face in the third row from the rear, one that should not have been here, one that had him gasping in astonishment. Joe Wiseman. Joe had contributed as much towards the pollution of the local environment as Roeder's; he had used every conceivable type of chemical spray on his market garden crops. And it had taken the death of his wife to bring home to him just what he and other commercial growers were doing.

‘We don't need chemicals on the land.’ Give them all just one last run-through on the basics. ‘We never needed them, only some clever guys in their labs devised a way of making money and getting rich. Give the farmers an easy way to grow, dispense with muck-spreading, hoeing and weeding. They save on labour (or think they do), and we rake it in. OK, it seems to work and nobody takes much notice. The public scarcely realized what was happening back in the very beginning. And then things began to go wrong with Nature. Wildlife was affected. The partridge population declined, birds of prey almost became extinct. Why? Because the farmers were killing off all the insects which were the partridges' staple diet. Birds of prey like the buzzard were suffering because a foul disease had been introduced to wipe out the rabbits which they depended upon in order to survive. Kill everything; it doesn't matter, so long as our crops flourish, was the farmers' cry. Public protest was such, once everybody realized what was going on, that many of the early chemical insecticides had to be withdrawn. So the boffins went for something more subtle. Paraquat weedkillers that wipe out hares if they graze within a few hours of spraying. And now this latest horror. We still don't know exactly what it is, but we can hazard a guess. Roeder has seen what certain types of herbicides do to weeds – make them outgrow their strength, wither and die. So he works on something that would do the same to insects. It's a success from his point of view, except there's one big snag which isn't discovered until it's too late – the creatures grow and develop nasty traits hitherto foreign to them, but they don't die. And this countryside is crawling with them!’

By God, these villagers were angry now, he realized. A babble of conversation broke out, with various suggestions as to what should be done.

‘What about the petition we signed last week, Les?’ a voice from the rear asked.

‘I sent it off.’ He was having to shout to make himself heard now. ‘Direct to ADAS. At least they've closed Roeder's cyanide plant.’

‘The fucking place should be burned down!’

‘Now, hold on, we don't want any violence. I'm happy to lead you on a march to Roeder's right now, but once we step on to the wrong side of the law our case has gone. We're not going to sink to the level of some of these cranky minority animal lib groups and the like. It's got to be peaceful.’

‘Hear, hear.’

Les thought to himself then how easy it was to sway a crowd. All they needed was somebody to lead them; it was the same the world over, whatever the cause. Meek and mild individuals found their courage in a throng.

The policeman slipped outside and radioed back to the station. There wasn't likely to be any trouble, but he thought another couple of officers on hand might be a wise move. You could never be sure. When people got together to protest, they became obsessional.

A hundred strong, an angry column with Les Earnshaw at its head began the journey from the village hall down the main street and up towards Roeder Agrochemicals Limited. Diane walked at his side, feeling proud of her husband. He had put the case against chemicals on the land tonight as well as anybody could have done; disbelievers and don't knows had been won over. She just hoped they would not do anything stupid and spoil it all.

The late evening sunshine gave the bare hedges and fields a macabre appearance. Everywhere she looked she knew that something was wrong, she could not kid herself. It was like the aftermath of a nuclear war. Diane shivered.

But from the acres of desolation the company were observed, by eyes that watched and followed their winding course along the narrow country lanes; by creatures that had become alien to their own habitat, yet were learning to adapt. With slight skin colourations, the beginning of a new camouflage on their distended bodies, they blended in with the parched countryside.

The creatures regarded Man as an enemy, but did not fear him any longer; they hated him with a burning intensity. Huge slugs, their shiny blackness merging into a dirty brown to match the parched earth, frogs in the ditches slightly darker as they squatted in the remnants of the mud from the big storm, were all watching. Yet apart from their grotesque mutations there was something else that was unnatural: a slothfulness, a reluctance to move. Their bodies were pulsing as though every breath was a concerted effort.

They just watched and hated Man for what he had done to them.

Sue Richards had not joined the march. She felt as strongly as any of those hundred people, but she also had an aversion to protests. An old-fashioned view, perhaps, but it was something she could not bring herself to do. During the NUT troubles a few years ago she had firmly resisted the demonstrations. Somehow, she felt, they destroyed dignity, weakened the cause. Chanting and slogan-bearing was no way to win over the opposition. In this, as in everything else, the pen was mightier than the banner. Petitions were more effective than protest gatherings and noisy marches.

She slipped discreetly away and made her way back to the schoolhouse. There was nothing to stop her leaving Pen-y-Cwm tomorrow; school holidays did not tie her to the village. All the same, she felt it would be running out on the brave people who had stayed behind. So she would remain.

She let herself in and went through to the kitchen. She put the kettle on, heaped a teaspoonful of instant coffee into a cup and waited for the water to boil. Everything that had been said tonight was the stark truth. Why, for instance, if dieldrin was proved to be a cancer-causing chemical spray, and was banned in places like Japan and Sweden, was it permitted to be used in Britain? And the quasi ban on DDT was not really a ban at all; UK production and export continued, and despite the voluntary ban on use, it could still be found on sale. Why? One answer – money! Like tobacco; the government put health warnings on every packet of cigarettes and advised people not to smoke, but if no one smoked the Treasury's coffers would be in a sorry state. Rot your lungs and let's have your money. The government was visibly doing something about smoking, but turning a blind eye to it at the same time. Hypocrisy.

The latch on the back door clicked, making her jump. Damn that old catch, she thought, it was always flipping open unless she turned the key. Before next term began she would really have to get it fixed. The kettle started to boil. She resolved to go and shut the door in a minute.

She poured boiling water into the cup, then went to the fridge for milk. An early night would not come amiss; she had not been sleeping well lately, and was it any wonder? Did anybody in the village sleep peacefully these nights? If she wasn't giving herself nightmares wondering what monstrosities were outside trying to find a way in, then she was tossing and turning in a stifling bedroom because she was afraid to open the window.

Sue stirred her coffee. Maybe she ought to go and shut that door right away.

As she turned she saw the frog. She gave a startled gasp, and spilled some of her drink on the hardtop working surface. Then she heard it begin to run off on to the floor. Oh, good God!

The creature was squatting just inside the kitchen doorway, a fat bulging ball of slime, half the size of the football which the children kicked around the playground during the dinner break. She saw its flat head, mouth wide and dribbling a dark-coloured saliva that hung in twin strings and protuberant eyes that were focused unwaveringly on her. It knew she was afraid and it was gloating.

She backed away a step, and then came an awful realization. It was between herself and the only route to freedom. There was just one exit, a single door out of the kitchen. The windows were small and only opened with difficulty; they were certainly not large enough to squeeze through.

Sue glanced about her. Don't panic, the thing can't move very fast. It did not need to, she knew; all it had to do was to go on squatting where it was and it could keep her prisoner here all night. She could climb up on to the working surfaces and she did no t think it could jump that high, but the fact remained there was nowhere she could go. Until somebody came to rescue her … and during the holidays she sometimes went for days without a single person calling at the schoolhouse.

‘Go on, go away!’ Her voice shook, the words were laughable; the frog was not going to go away, that much was obvious.

It did not move, but seemed to have sunk even lower on to the ground, its body too heavy for its legs to support. It was breathing loudly, with wheezing croaks, as though it was in some kind of pain. And all the while its huge eyes glowed with intense hatred.

It can't hurt me if it can't get to me, the schoolmistress consoled herself. All it can do is inconvenience me, keep me trapped here for hours. Her eyes searched the room for a weapon of some kind, preferably one with which she could strike from a distance. Or throw. There wasn't anything except the bread knife, and she was not getting that close to her slimy captor. The brooms and the mop were kept in the cupboard out in the hall.

Then her gaze completed a circle and alighted on the electric kettle. Boiling water; how often in the past had she been called out by the children to pour it on an ants' nest in the playground? Normal ants, that was. Her pulses quickened.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee, froggie, or do you prefer water, boiling of course?’ Her laugh sounded slightly hysterical as she held the spout of the kettle under the tap and began to refill it.

The creature's eyes seemed to glow and burn into her. Oh, Lord, I think it guesses what I'm going to do. I shouldn't have spoken.

But the amphibian did not move. Its heaving belly was resting on the floor tiles and its rasping breath was even more erratic.

‘Your trouble is you're overweight,’ she said. Oh, hurry up and boil, kettle! A new kettle was something that was long overdue. It would be just like the element to pack up now. Come on!

Something was definitely wrong with that frog. It was as though its own breathing was inflating its body still further, stretching the skin to its very limit. Its horizontal mouth was wide now, as if it was trying to expel excess air. Then it vomited a thick liquid that reminded Sue of black treacle, and started coughing.

It's dying, she thought, and forgot about the kettle even though it was starting to hum.

The frog was growing larger before her eyes, like a sickly green balloon being pumped up at the school Christmas party. The skin began bulging in places, revolting bubbles rippling all over it. Its eyes were almost buried beneath a distended head pouch, and the legs had abandoned their efforts to hold it upright.

Expanding. Straining. And then it burst!

There was a noise like a dull splash and the frog's skin ripped in a kind of unzipping movement, beginning somewhere at the base of the overloaded stomach and travelling upwards, tearing it open and throwing out a slimy mulch.

The creature gave one final croaking gasp before it sank down, squelched and settled in its own morass and began to deflate. A foul stench filled the room, a pungent smell of rotting flesh, then the body shrank and became unrecognizable with death and decay, instant putrefaction.

White-faced, Sue Richards turned away, leaned over the sink and vomited. She was trembling uncontrollably now, and could not bring herself to look again at the stinking mess on the floor.

And amidst her revulsion there was a spark of pity for the thing, fanned by a fury that Man was capable of such acts of unbelievable cruelty. For once, she regretted not having joined that protest march.

16

Donald Phelps had gone back down into the main laboratory and closed the door behind him. His face was ashen and his body trembled with the rage that simmered inside him. An hour ago he had heard the news of John Holden's death, and was numbed with shock. Holy Christ, he was a murderer, as guilty as Roeder. A mass-murderer as surely as if he had herded his fellow humans to the gas chambers; he was responsible for all the deaths in Pen-y-Cwm these past weeks.

He stood there, looking around at the cages and their inmates. Holy Christ, it was awful, immoral, he realized. There should be a law about doing this kind of thing to any living creature. Could you really blame the animal rights groups when you saw things like this? And this was just one of a hundred cover-ups hidden beneath the veil of science.

That rabbit, if he'd had the courage he would have rescued it and put it out of its misery. The animal crouched in a corner of its cage, its eyes dulled, its coat covered with huge bulbous ticks the size of ping-pong balls, white and bloated, pulsing as they drained their host of its life blood. The coney hadn't moved since this morning; it would still be squatting in the same position when it died. Roeder had instructed his chief chemist to keep on putting the rabbits in there and feed the ticks as much as they could take. ‘I want to see the buggers bursting out of their skins,’ he had said. ‘Because that's what they're supposed to do.’ And to hell with the farm livestock they feed on in the meantime, Phelps thought. So far, only two of the bloodsuckers had burst; the splat of blood had dried and solidified on the cage floor. And the rest ate ravenously.

Earwigs; they were busying themselves making a warren out of a stale cabbage, only the cabbage was not big enough. Any minute it would fall to pieces, honeycombed until there wasn't enough of it left to hold together.

Slugs; a black revolting slimy mass. Phelps could not be sure, but it looked as though they had resorted to cannibalism. ‘So what?’ Roeder had snapped. ‘Our job is to destroy 'em, it doesn't matter how. If DD7 turns the lot into cannibals, fine. It'll do the job, wipe 'em out, which is what it's intended to do.’

The big tank in the corner held five frogs. They were bunched, breathing laboriously, their grotesque bodies inflating and deflating, seemingly too heavy to move. There had been some newts in with them a few days ago, but now there was not a sign of them.

‘They've bloody eaten 'em!’ Phelps spoke aloud. ‘The filthy bastards have devoured 'em, and before long they'll start on one another.’ Their eyes were now fixed on the other cages, the slugs and those earthworms which had bored their way up out of the soil and were lying on the surface, and there was no mistaking the frogs' expressions: hunger and lust.

Phelps wrung his hands together in despair. Oh, God, what have I done! Without me, Roeder could never have perfected the DD7 formula. Perfected? That was an incongruous word for an abomination, a chemical devastation of Nature's kingdom. It would not just be confined to Pen-y-Cwm, he realized. It would spread further, across the whole of Britain, maybe cross the oceans of the world to other continents.

Holden had been right from the very beginning, but he had never had the courage to stand by him. Now he's dead and you've got all this on your conscience, Donald Phelps. It will torture you until your dying day. The man who introduced myxomatosis had gone into a monastery, he remembered, a closeted life, where you prayed and did menial chores all day, deliberately humbling yourself; cut yourself off from the rest of the world. But he knew he could not escape from what he had done. There was no hiding place from his conscience.

Alternatively he could take his own life. As a bachelor he had no family to consider, nobody to turn to in his darkest hour. That worked both ways. He wondered if he could do it; a handful of aspirin and a glass of whisky, then just retire to bed. No pain, it could be a pleasant way to go. Except that he was leaving that bastard Roeder to reap the rewards of his, Phelps', work. And that hurt. There would be a big pay-off even if DD7 was banned by ADAS; Roeder could take it abroad, do a multi-million dollar deal. It had had all the necessary publicity and there would be ruthless agrochemical combines only too willing to cash in on it. If he was going to die, he decided, then Roeder and this place had to go with him. But how?

‘You'd like to get out, wouldn't you?’ The chemist addressed the captive frogs. ‘You'd like to be let loose on the world like all the other horrors out there in the countryside.’

They looked at him, and it was not difficult to believe that they understood what he said. Their eyes flickered, came alive and dispensed that opaque film over their tiny orbs. Breathing faster, pulsating. Eager. They seemed to swell to an even greater size as though air was being pumped into their bodies before his very eyes. I'm sorry for what we've done to you, so I'm going to set you all free and perhaps that will make amends, and afterwards I'll think about what I'm going to do to myself. Believe me, I am sorry. He picked up a heavy claw hammer.

He heard the door behind him open and felt a sudden draught of cooling air. He stiffened, knowing without looking round who it was who stepped into the laboratory and stood directly behind him.

‘Phelps, what the fuck's going on?’

‘I'm glad you've come, Roeder.’ The ‘mister’, the respect was gone. ‘Because I wouldn't have wanted you to miss this for anything.’

‘You're crazy.’ Roeder stood there in the doorway, his gaze taking in the whole scene, seeing and understanding. Phelps had flipped his lid, gone over the top; the strain, the public outcry had been too much for him. At a time like this you needed a strong character, an inbred ruthlessness. Phelps was a brilliant agrochemist but it ended there.

‘Come on up to the office, Donald. Let's have a drink and talk it over.’ Humour him, get him out of here at all costs.

‘No!’ Phelps turned and Roeder saw how his features were twisted into a mask of hate and fury, how the eyes burned with insanity. ‘There's no going back, Roeder, not after what we've done.’

‘But we haven't done anything.’ A smile, a shrug of the shoulders, a pseudo-relaxed posture. Play it right down. ‘We're quite within the law. We tested our product according to the regulations.’

‘That's a lie.’ Phelps' head jutted forward, saliva trickling down his chin. ‘And you know it is, Roeder. According to the report, but that was rigged. On your orders.’

‘Nobody can prove it. Holden's dead.’

‘I can.’

‘But it wouldn't be in your interests to, Donald, now would it? They'd crucify you along with me. You'd get sent down, your pension would be gone forever. Look, be sensible, the two of us can pull the fat out of the fire provided we stick together, provided our stories tally. Can't you see that, man?’

‘Oh, I can see it, all right.’ Donald Phelps had backed up against a glass case of seething, swarming ants and felt the glass vibrating from within. ‘Haven't we done enough harm already? Look what's happened out there, the whole countryside overrun with monstrous mutants. People have died, farm crops have been destroyed. We've destroyed the balance of the countryside and it can never be put right. We've inflicted a terrible curse on folks for miles around.’

‘I think you're overreacting.’ Roeder was wondering what his chances were of getting the hammer off Phelps, overpowering him. Or maybe he should flee, slam the door, lock this madman in here and summon help. No, Phelps would shout his mouth off to the police when they came. If only Phelps was dead, like Holden, then there would be no problem.

‘It's true, and you know it.’

‘What if it is? D'you think we're the only agrochemical company that's ever pulled a fast one? Of course not. There have been bigger blunders than ours, and the authorities won't want to look too deeply into it. We've got to be sensible, pull together. Now, let's go and have that drink and …’

Phelps was standing over the ant cage, the hammer raised.

‘Don't do it, Donald. For your own sake, don't do it!’

‘D'you think I care about me any longer? I can never live with myself again after this. Oh, Christ, if only I'd stood up to you in the beginning this would never have happened.’

Phelps raised the hammer higher, paused a second, then brought it down with all the force he could muster. There was a crack like a pistol exploding, and the glass top shattered. Fragments and shards flew in all directions, the entire oblong box appeared to disintegrate before Roeder's eyes. And out of the powdered glass came the ants, bodies the size of fully grown bluebottles, swarming to freedom, sprouting wings ready for flight.

‘You stupid bastard, Phelps!’

Phelps seemed totally unaware of Roeder's presence as he moved towards the next cage, laughing insanely, his cheek bleeding from a deep cut where a splinter of flying glass had caught him. The earwigs' case shattered. Then the aphids'; the woodlice and the caterpillars remained dazed, as though they were not yet aware that freedom was theirs. The slugs were slithering out on the bench, down on to the floor, moving with unbelievable speed, a maze of interwoven, glistening slime patterns in their wake.

Roeder did not move; he stood transfixed a couple of feet inside the door. He could have made a run for it, slammed the door and locked it, keeping the escaping horrors at bay. He had maybe five seconds in which to make up his mind and save himself. He stayed. Logically he did not know why; certainly it was not out of any chivalry towards the environment. He remained there for the same reason that a screaming man has to be dragged from his blazing house: because it represents his empire, his total worldly possessions, and to hell with the insurance. This laboratory was the achievement of a lifetime, the awful living proof of DD7, yet still not proved because the amphibians and insects were still alive. For God's sake die, you fuckers, and let me go!

But the creatures were very much alive. Phelps was staggering between the benches, an anthill in human shape, earwigs scurrying over him, slugs beginning to crawl up his legs, bulldozing the smaller life forms out of their way as they searched for human flesh. He was screaming, pawing at his eyes, choking as they filled his mouth.

‘You bloody fool, look what you've done!’ Roeder yelled, and then they reached him, too, and there was no escape.

He half-turned towards the door, but the frogs were behind him, flat hungry jaws agape, the stench of their foul breath like a poison gas. Instinctively he lurched away from them and stumbled another couple of yards into the lab. He felt cold, biting suction on his ankles, small teeth ripping at his flesh. The slugs!

A cloud of ants hit him full in the face like a handful of sharp sand and stung his eyes. He struck at them, kicking out in a vain attempt to dislodge the slugs which had already scaled up to knee-level.

He fell against a trestle table and flung himself headlong on to it, a flimsy raft in tempestuous seas. At least the frogs could not reach him, he thought. Yet.

His body was on fire, a million burning pinpricks, his eyes sightless smarting orbs. He was writhing, sobbing, cursing because they had no right to do this to him. These insects and amphibians were lab specimens, a lower form of life. Their role was to suffer and die, not rebel. How dared they!

Roeder felt himself beginning to slide and clutched at the table edge, but it made no difference. The table was tipping up, about to overturn. The frogs, oh, Christ, it was the frogs that were doing it!

Phelps made it as far as his desk in the corner of the room before he fell, then writhed on the floor clutching at his groin. No, not there, please! Can't you see I want to help you, I've set you free!

A crash came from somewhere close by as one of the tables overturned. Something heavy hit the floor and gave a stifled scream. That must be Roeder, he thought. Phelps turned his head, and was afforded a brief glimpse before the insects flooded his eyes. Roeder was stripped of most of his clothes, his flesh raw and bleeding where the ants were eating him down to his bones. And the bastard is still alive! But we're both going to die, Roeder, you swine, and I'm glad.

The frogs were hanging back, though … there was something wrong with them. Growing before his eyes, swelling, their skins stretched so tight that they were squeaking and croaking in agony; and then they started to burst, with dull wet splats, a mass of slimy innards spilling out, collapsing in their own stinking remnants. And worst of all, the slugs were moving in to feed on the mess.

Roeder must be dead, lying motionless under that living insect mountain; Phelps knew there was no way he could be alive now. Phelps struggled; he wanted to surrender, but he could not subdue the will to live even though he wanted to die. Something in one of his pockets rattled – a box of matches. His tortured mind forced the idea upon him: they're afraid of fire – something he'd read or heard somewhere.

Somehow, with fingers that were living digits of ants and earwigs, he fumbled the box of Winners out of his pocket, slid the tray, grabbed some of the sticks and rasped the heads on the emery paper. Flames, giving off sulphurous fumes, dazzled him even through the layers of ants eating at his eyeballs. See how you like that! He tossed the burning matches into the air, then scrabbled for more, insane with delight at his own miniature firework display, striking and throwing.

Then he spilled the contents, dropped the empty box and laughed to himself. Another belief disproved – insects were not afraid of fire, they could not give a bloody damn!

Semi-consciously he knew that he was slipping into death, that the end would not be long now. He felt his attackers but their bites no longer brought pain; his body was numbed, insensitive. He was aware of liquid, thick and sticky, trickling over him, warm and vile-smelling; and popping noises that reminded him of his mother cooking popcorn on the stove in an old saucepan on bonfire night as a special treat.

And when he pawed feebly at the hordes on him they seemed lifeless. They stuck to his fingers in clusters and did not wriggle or squirm. A revolting mulch, if he had had the strength he would have shaken them from him.

Another odour, a pungent one that penetrated his blocked nostrils, had him wheezing his last breaths. Smoke! At first he could not figure it out but then he remembered those matches he had struck. They must be lying smouldering somewhere.

He slipped into unconsciousness, surfaced for a few seconds and felt the heat scorching his raw disfigurements. There was a blast of fire and the roaring of flames; their brightness was a haze beyond his blindness. A moment of panic, then he told himself it did not matter because he was going to die anyway. Somewhere insects were squeaking in terror, but there did not seem to be as many of them as before. He felt a mass of them roll from him and shower on to the floor.

They're all bloody dead! The irony of it made him try to laugh. Oh, Jesus, how fucking funny. The buggers were about to die anyway, that was why they had grown so much bigger – the final swelling of their bodies until they could not take any more. Like the frogs, everything else had popped too.

He had jumped the gun. Another few minutes and they would have been exploding harmlessly in the safety of their glass cages. Instead he had freed them and given them their revenge before they died. DD7 had been a success after all.

‘D'you hear me, Roeder?’ Phelps thought that he might just have managed a final shout.‘D'you hear me? DD7 did work, after all. The buggers popped their skins but nobody will ever know!’

Then he went back under, beneath a wave of intense heat.

17

The marchers saw the column of smoke rising up into the sky before they reached the bend in the road that screened Roeder Agrochemicals from them, a smutty darkening of the azure heavens. They smelled the burning and increased their pace. By the time the building came into view it was a veritable inferno, flames leaping a hundred feet into the air, showering sparks into the breeze. Already the tinder-dry experimental spraying acreage was beginning to smoulder. Muffled explosions came from within, followed by gushes of bluish-green flames, the epitome of hell in all its fury.

‘Good riddance!’ somebody in the crowd yelled. ‘It's no more than the bastards deserve.’

‘Keep back.’ Les took hold of Diane's wrist. ‘We don't know what chemicals are in there. If the whole lot explodes …’

People were retreating to a safe distance, coughing, laughing and shouting. The petition, the protest wasn't needed after all; the danger had resolved itself, at least as far as Roeder's was concerned. But the fire did not solve the problem of what had happened, was still happening, in the surrounding countryside.

‘Let's go.’ Les pulled Diane with him and began pushing his way through the crowd. There's nothing more to see here.’ If these folk wanted to stay behind and gloat then that was their business, he thought.

In the distance they heard approaching sirens. The smoke must have been spotted miles away; the fire brigade would be here in a matter of minutes. Roeder Agrochemicals Limited was no place to hang around.

Les and Diane walked fast, several times having to push back into the bare hedgerows to allow fire engines and police cars to pass. The smoke mushroomed in the sky, forming a huge pall that was blotting out the evening sun. Dusk would come early in Pen-y-Cwm tonight; but there would be no darkness, because the sky would be an iridescent glow of unnatural fiery colours.

‘Look.’ Diane pulled up, backed away and tried to tug her husband to one side. ‘Oh, my God, Les, just look!’

‘Jesus!’

He followed her gaze and saw the stinking, revolting mulch that lined the verges on either side of the lane, spilling on to the chippings and tarmac. A morass of barely recognizable corpses: slugs that had split their skins like fat sausages bursting in the frying pan; frogs'skins that might have been zip-on reptilian jumpsuits, cast to one side because they were too small, oozing a treacly mess of blown innards. Insects, dead and dying, were trapped in the mire, the living buzzing their terror. Caterpillars had shed their furry coats, some were still popping in a cauldron of bubbling cold death.

‘What's happening?’ She turned her head away, heaved and knew she would be sick before long.

‘They're dying.’ That much was obvious. Everywhere the mutants lay in their death throes, burst bodies that squirmed their last, giant earthworms more hideous than ever, caught out on the hard surface of the road where they had wriggled in their final panic. ‘The whole bloody lot are dying, Diane.’ Jubilation crept into his voice, making him shout. ‘Their number's up, the buggers have finally outgrown their bodies. It's all over. We don't even have to wait for the winter!’

That was when she threw up, relief mixed with the nausea, then cowered back in the hedgerow with her husband as yet another fire engine roared by, a scarlet monster that churned up the corpses as though ploughing its way through a depth of slush, showering them with stinking offal.

‘Let's go home and get cleaned up.’ Les took her hand. It was going to be a long time before either of them forgot that night.

Sue Richards had shovelled up the remains of the dead frog, thrown it out into the garden and mopped the floor to remove the slime and the smell. Then she made sure that the key was turned in the back door and went upstairs.

She would not sleep, but somehow she had to pass the nocturnal hours. She would read, perhaps doze later, and then tomorrow she would go away for a week or two, she decided.

It was with puzzlement and relief that she noted how the outside of the windows was not plastered with crawling black slugs tonight, neither did hordes of giant night-moths fling themselves relentlessly at the glass. It was so eerie, so deathly quiet. She shivered, then she saw the fiery glow in the western sky and heard the first fire engine go screaming by.

Oh no, surely the villagers had not set fire to Roeder's. She paled. The fools! No, they would not do that, they were no mindless mob, just a bunch of responsible people like herself stating a valid case. Whatever had happened, there was no doubt that it was the agrochemical place that was on fire, and she prayed that it would be razed to the ground before the blaze could be put out.

She lay on the bed fully clothed, a paperback novel open in front of her, but the words meant nothing to her. Her concentration was gone. It was going to be an awfully long time until morning. She made a concerted effort to try and take in the printed pages, but it did not work.

The type seemed to merge, blur. Her eyes were smarting, watering. She rubbed at them; they were very sore. Perhaps it was just tiredness; she remembered that she had a card from the optician in her desk downstairs, reminding her she was overdue for a test. That could be her problem; she would ring tomorrow and make an appointment before she left.

Her throat was sore and her nose was becoming blocked too, forcing her to breathe through her mouth, which in turn increased the discomfort in her larynx. She felt she was definitely sickening for something. Maybe an aspirin would help.

She got up off the bed, lurched and held on to a chair as a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea hit her. The room seemed to go darker and her vision was blurred. And she felt incredibly ill.

My God, I'm going blind! Don't be stupid, it's just a bug of some sort. Like flu. I need help, must get help. She staggered to the doorway, groped for the landing light and managed to flick it on at the third attempt. It was so dim, the stairway seemed a deep dark chasm yawning beneath her. A sense of vertigo assailed her, making her draw back. Don't be damned ridiculous, you've got to go downstairs; hold on to the rail, take a step at a time.

Sue thought she would never make it, clinging on with sweaty hands, everywhere becoming darker and darker. Hot salty fluid gushed from her tear ducts and scalded her cheeks; she could barely see more than a yard in front of her now. The front door had to be over there … Swaying, clutching at a table, scrabbling, she found the catch and wrestled with it until it clicked.

Outside, the night air was hot and smoky, suffocating, burning her lungs with every intake of breath. She was aware of a sharp moistness in the atmosphere, a stinging dampness as though somebody was spraying her with aerosol fly-killer. Following the winding path, she knew that before long she would emerge at the main street parallel with the school playground.

That fire, the smoke was billowing down into the village from Roeder's, a pungent fog … and something else too. She could not make up her mind what it was, like burning paint that she felt and breathed.

She reached the gate and was in the street. There seemed to be people everywhere, ghostly blurred figures that staggered to and fro, crying out for help. The doctor, oh where is the doctor? He's dead, burned alive in the church, don't you remember? Now we're all going to die, we're all going to burn.

She fell headlong over a body that lay prone across the pavement, a limp female in rumpled clothing, and Sue knew that she was dead. Everybody's going to die. Please God, what is happening? This isn't just the fire that is doing this to us!

Blaring deafening sirens, flashing blue lights that dazzled and seared her failing eyes, as ambulances arrived, parking on the pavement, doors wide in readiness. Figures that wore gauze masks and protective goggles, grabbed people, herding them into the vehicles like sheep being loaded for market. Screams and wails were everywhere, the cries of the tortured and the damned.

Sue felt hands grasping her, helping her up, dragging her towards the nearest ambulance.

‘Please,’ she gasped, ‘I want a doctor.’

‘Everybody's going to see a doctor.’ A gruff but kindly dalek-like reply came from behind the mask. ‘We're getting you to hospital as soon as possible.’

She was lucky, she got a seat. Those that followed her were dumped on the floor, overcrowded whimpering humanity. The doors were closed. The vehicle vibrated as the engine was revved, bumped down on to the road and began to gather speed. Sue could not be sure whether or not the interior light was on. Rubbing her eyes, she found she was virtually blind now; and her lungs were burning so that it hurt to breathe.

‘What happened?’

Somebody asked the question that was uppermost in her mind, a cracked voice that came from one of those on the floor, a questing cry of hopelessness. We're all going to die, but, please, somebody tell us why.

Why … why… for God's sake, why ?

‘The chemical place.’ The answer grated but was reasonably coherent, a whisper racked with agony. Sue strained her ears. She had a right to know why she was going to die. ‘It blew up … the cyanide plant …’

At least she knew now, and she sank back in her seat and let her head drop on her breast. Lethal methyl isocyanate. The new safety legislations had come too late. They had said it could never happen in Britain, but it had.

Another Bhopal.

The End

Thank you for purchasing this ebook.
I hope you enjoyed the read!.
Guy.

This ebook is the thirty-fifth book to be published as part of a project to convert Guy's entire back catalogue to ebook format. Beginning July 2010 it is expected to have all books available by the end of 2012.

The list of books so far published is :

1. Werewolf by Moonlight.

2. The Sucking Pit.

3. The Slime Beast.

4. Night of the Crabs.

5. The Truckers 1 - The Black Knights.

6. The Truckers 2 - Hi-Jack!.

7. Return of the Werewolf.

8. Bamboo Guerillas.

9. Killer Crabs.

10. Bats Out of Hell.

11. The Son of the Werewolf.

12. Locusts.

13. The Origin of the Crabs.

14. Caracal.

15. Thirst.

16. Deathbell.

17. Satan's Snowdrop.

18. Doomflight.

19. Warhead.

20. Manitou Doll.

21. Wolfcurse.

22. Crabs On The Rampage.

23. The Pluto Pact.

24. Entombed.

25. The Lurkers.

26. Sabat 1: The Graveyard Vultures.

27. Sabat 2: The Blood Merchants.

28. Sabat 3: Cannibal Cult.

29. Blood Circuit.

30. Accursed.

31. Sabat 4: The Druid Connection.

32. The Undead.

33. Crabs' Moon.

34. The Walking Dead.

35. Throwback.

36. The Wood.

37. The Neophyte.

The next book will be :

38. Abomination.

"Franklin Roeder, head of Roeder Agrochemicals Ltd., has developed a killer pesticide spray by applying the principle of weedkiller (that the weeds outgrow themselves and die) to insects. The first part is a huge success; everything from frogs to wood lice become bloated under its effects; but the second part is much more of a problem; most of the creatures stubbornly refuse to die. Roeder persuades his lab scientists to lie in their reports, so as to get an early release date for his pesticide. Meanwhile the effects of the spray are causing a plague of oversized and hungry insects."

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.