Casey thanked them and replaced the receiver. Then she rang the hospital itself. The operator apologized, told her that the hospital was jammed with calls and suggested she try later.
Numbed, she scribbled a note to her father, looked for the town on a road-map, and hurried out to her bright yellow saloon car, a present from her father. She avoided driving through London by going north then around on the North Circular.
She bypassed Basingstoke and Andover, taking minor roads, knowing the towns would be jammed with traffic. On the outskirts of Salisbury, she ran into heavy traffic being held up by the police. Drivers of cars were being crossed-examined as to their destination, and unless their reasons for travel were genuine and not just to satisfy ghoulish curiosity about the earthquake, they were turned back. When it was Casey’s turn, she explained about John and was allowed to continue her journey with the undertaking that on no account would she try to travel beyond the town to the disaster area. On their advice, she parked her car on the outskirts of the town and walked to the hospital which she found in a state of turmoil. Having enquired about Holman, she was asked to wait with the many other anxious relatives or friends who had come to the hospital for news of victims of the catastrophe.
It was not until 8.00 that evening and after several attempts to obtain news of Holman that a weary-looking doctor came down to see her. He took her aside and told her in a low voice that it would be better if she did not see John that night; he was suffering from shock and had sustained an injury that, although not too serious, required him to be given a blood transfusion and, at that moment, he was under heavy sedation. Observing the girl was in a highly emotional state, he chose not to explain the nature of Holman’s sickness at that time. Tomorrow, when she’d calmed down, would be time enough to explain that her lover, boyfriend, whatever he was to her, had gone totally mad, and at that moment was strapped to the bed, even though he was under sedation, so he could not harm himself or anybody else. It was strange how the man had been bent on killing himself. He’d had to be tied down in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and once there he’d broken free, smashed a glass window and tried to drive a long, knife-like shard of glass through his neck. Only the intervention of the burly ambulance driver who now suffered from a broken jaw caused by the ensuing struggle had saved him from cutting himself too deeply. Holman had gone completely berserk and two porters and a doctor had been injured before he could be restrained and finally sedated. Even then he was fitful and had to be strapped down. No, the doctor decided, now was not the time to tell her. Tomorrow she could see for herself.
Casey spent the night in an hotel crowded with journalists and also people who lived near the wrecked village and thought it wise to be a little further away from the area. By careful listening Casey learned more details of the earthquake. At least a third of the village’s tiny population of four hundred had been killed, at least another third injured. Many of the old houses and cottages that were not even near the enormous split in the earth had been demolished, killing or maiming their occupants. The most remarkable story was of the little girl and the man who had been rescued from the very jaws of the eruption. They’d been discovered alive inside the gigantic hole and had been pulled to the surface, the girl unconscious, the man in a state of shock, but nevertheless, very much alive. Only much later did Casey realize they had been talking of John Holman.
The next morning she went back to the hospital and was told she would be able to see him later on in the day, but to be prepared for a shock. The doctor she’d seen the night before explained quietly to her that Holman was no longer the man she had known, that he had gone uncontrollably insane. When the girl broke down, the doctor hastened to add that the illness could be short-term, that the experience he’d suffered might have only temporarily snapped his mind and given time it could heal itself. She went back to the hotel and cried her way through the day until it was time to go back to the hospital. They advised her not to see him, but she insisted – and then regretted her insistence.
The doctor had been right – he wasn’t the man she knew. And loved. He was an animal. A foul-mouthed, raging animal. Heavy leather straps tied him to a bed. A bed in a special room for it contained only the bed; there were no windows and the walls were covered in a soft, plastic-like material. Only his head, hands and feet could move, and this they did in a constant, violent motion, his head thrashing from side to side, his throat bandaged, thick wadding secured in his mouth to prevent him from biting off his own tongue, his hands clenching and unclenching like claws. And his eyes. She would never forget the maniac look in those enlarged, staring eyes. He had worked the wadding in his mouth loose and began to scream. She couldn’t believe the obscenity she heard, that any human being could harbour the thoughts that flowed verbally from his lips. Although his eyes looked at her, he didn’t see her. A nurse ran forward and once again stuffed the wadding back into his mouth, carefully avoiding his snapping teeth.
Casey left in a wretched daze, tears blurring her vision. At first, she hadn’t been sure if it even was John, his physical appearance had seemed so different, and now she wanted to tell herself that it hadn’t been. But it was useless to pretend. She had to face up to the facts if she were to help him recover – and if he didn’t? Could she go on loving the thing she’d just seen?
She returned to the hotel, her mind in a turmoil, her emotions confused. A conflict began deep inside her. After hours of weeping, of fighting the repulsion she felt for his madness, she began to lose the battle. She rang her father. He urged her to come home immediately and she had to resist the impulse to agree to it; she wanted his protection, his comforting words, the words that would take the responsibility away from her.
But not. She owed it to John to stay near him while there was a chance – the flimsiest chance. The illness couldn’t destroy what had been, the closeness that had been theirs. She told her father she would stay until she knew about John one way or the other. She was adamant that he shouldn’t come down, that she would come home only when satisfied John was beyond help.
Casey’s wretchedness increased that evening when she visited Holman again. The doctor felt that she should know about the young child rescued with him who had died that afternoon without ever coming out of the unusual coma she’d been in since the eruption. They now thought she’d been affected by gas released from below the ground. It was possible that Holman also had been affected and this, in some strange way, was the cause of his madness. The next few days would tell if the brain damage was permanent or would pass. Or if the effects were fatal.
She hardly slept that night. Now that death had to be considered, her emotions had become clearer: if he lived, even if he were still insane, she would never leave him. Reality told her that her love could not be the same as before, that it would be a different kind of love, a love born out of his need for her. If he died – she forced her mind to accept the words – if he died, then she would forget the creature she had seen these last two days and remember only what he’d been, what they’d shared. In the early hours of the morning she finally fell into an exhausted and dream-filled sleep.
When she returned to the hospital in the morning, dread in her heart but still hopeful, Holman was completely sane.
Weak, ashen-faced, but totally sane. And one week later, he was ready to go home.
Sitting on the steps next to him, Casey took Holman’s hand. He kissed her cheek and smiled at her. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘For what?’
‘For being here. For not running away.’
She was silent.
‘The doctors told me how I was,’ he continued. ‘It must have been frightening for you.’
‘It was. Very.’
‘They’re still trying to work out how a complete maniac could become normal again so quickly. They say the gas, whatever it was, must have been responsible. It temporarily affected the brain then wore off. I was lucky. It killed the little girl.’ He stared at the ground, u
nable to hide his grief.
She squeezed his hand and asked, ‘Are you sure it’s all right for you to leave the hospital so soon?’
‘Oh, they wanted me to stay. Wanted to do more tests, find out if there’d be any permanent damage. But I’ve had enough. Reporters, television interviewers – they’ve hounded the survivors that are well enough, and I’ve been a prime target. Even Spiers came down yesterday to interrogate me.’
Spiers was Holman’s immediate boss at his Ministry, a man he both admired and hated. Their many disputes arose mainly after Holman’s various assignments had been completed, when he had provided all the evidence he could lay his hands on, presented all the facts to Spiers who had engineered the assignment, and then the man would take no action against the offenders. ‘It will go on file,’ he would say. What Holman never knew was the battle his superior went through to get action taken, but his power was limited against the overriding strength of wealth and politics.
‘What did he want to know?’ asked Casey.
‘Whether I’d completed my weekend’s assignment.’ He couldn’t tell her Spiers had come to find out if he had found any evidence that could connect the earthquake with experiments being carried out on the military base. Holman thought it unlikely and had no such proof anyway.
‘Fat little toad! I don’t like him,’ said Casey.
‘He’s not really too bad. Bit cold, a bit hard – but he can be okay. Anyway, I’ve got to report to him tomorrow – ’ he put up his hand at her protests, ‘just to give him a debrief on the weekend job, then I’m on a week’s leave.’
‘I should think so too, after all you’ve been through.’
‘Yes, but honestly, I feel fine now. Throat’s still a little sore, but they tell me I was lucky – the cut wasn’t too deep – and God knows, I’ve had a good enough rest in here. Come on, let’s leave before I go out of my mind again.’
He laughed at her frown.
It was just before Weyhill that they ran into the fog again. The roads had been fairly quiet, the weather fine. They kept to the smaller roads purposely, not wanting to rush back to London but to enjoy the passing countryside, the peaceful warmth of the summer morning.
When they saw the heavy cloud ahead of them it was about half-a-mile away, looking depressingly ominous. They could see its outermost edges quite clearly, but its top was more like the usual fuzzy-edged fog shape.
‘Strange,’ said Holman, stopping the car. ‘Is it smoke or just a mist?’
‘It’s too heavy for mist,’ replied Casey, staring ahead. ‘It’s fog. Let’s go back, John, it’s creepy.’
‘It’s too much of a detour to go back. Anyway, it isn’t much of a fog, we’ll soon pass through it. Funny, it’s just like a wall, the sides are so straight.’
They both jumped at the sound of a horn as a coach sped past them heading towards Weyhill. Six small boys stuck their tongues out and waggled their hands at them from the back window as the school bus swung back into the proper lane.
‘Bloody fool,’ muttered Holman. ‘He’s heading right into it.’ They watched it disappear down the road and then get swallowed up by the fog. ‘He must be bloody blind!’
They suddenly realized the fog had crept much nearer to them. ‘Christ, it moves fast,’ said Holman. ‘Come on then, let’s go through it. It’ll be okay if I take it easy.’
He put Casey’s car into first and drove on, unaware that the girl at his side was becoming unnaturally nervous. She couldn’t rationalize her apprehension, it was just that the black cloud somehow seemed pregnant with menace, like the heavy dark clouds just before a storm broke. She said nothing to Holman, but her hands gripped the sides of her seat tightly.
Very soon, they entered the fog.
It was much thicker than Holman had anticipated. He could barely see the road ahead. He drove cautiously, keeping in second, using dipped headlights. He leaned close to the windscreen for better vision, occasionally using his wipers to clear the heavy smog from the glass, keeping his side window open to look through now and again. The fog seemed to be tinged with yellow, or was it just the throwback glare from his headlights? As the slightly acrid smell reached his nostrils, a tiny nerve twitched in his memory cells. It was something to do with the earthquake the week before. He still couldn’t remember much about it – the doctors informed him this was perfectly normal, a certain part of his mind was still in a state of shock – but somehow the smell, the yellowish colour, the very atmosphere stirred something inside him. He broke into a cold sweat and stopped the car.
‘What’s the matter, John?’ Casey asked, alarm in her voice.
‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. The fog – it seems familiar.’
‘John, the papers said a cloud of dust or smoke came from the eruption; they thought it had been caused by a blast beneath the ground. This isn’t a normal fog we’re in. Could this be it?’
‘No, surely not. It would have been dispersed by the wind by now, not hanging around in a great lump.’
‘How do you know? If it came from deep underground, how do you know how it would act?’
‘All right, maybe it is. Anyway, let’s not sit here discussing it, let’s try and get clear first.’ He wound up the side window, hoping the action would not throw any fear into her. ‘At the rate it’s moving, I reckon it will be easier to try and go on through it rather than turn back.’
‘Okay,’ she answered, ‘but please be careful.’
He edged forward, his eyes peering ahead into the gloom. They had made a hundred yards’ slow progress when they came upon the coach lying half in a ditch alongside the road. They had nearly run into a small group of boys who had been standing at the rear of the coach before Holman jammed on his brakes. Fortunately, they had been travelling so slowly they were able to stop almost immediately.
‘Now come along, boys, I’ve already told you to keep to the side, away from the road,’ they heard a voice bellow.
Holman opened his door and climbed out of the car, telling Casey to remain inside. The slight but distinct odour of the fog disturbed him again as he closed the door behind him.
‘Is anyone hurt?’ he asked the spectral shape of the man he assumed was the boys’ master.
‘A few bruises here and there among the boys,’ came the reply as the figure approached him, ‘but I’m afraid our driver has suffered a nasty blow on the head.’
When the teacher was only three feet away Holman saw he was a tall, gaunt-looking man, with a hooked nose and deep-set eyes. He had only one arm, his right ending just above the wrist. The teacher went on, in a lower tone of voice. ‘Mind you, it was all his fault, the idiot. He was so busy joking with the boys he didn’t even notice the fog until he was in it and then he hardly slowed down even though I warned him.’ He looked down at the pupils who had now clustered around him. ‘Boys! I told you to get to the side of the road. Now the next boy who disobeys me gets a flogging. Move yourselves!’
They scattered, enjoying the fun now that they’d got over their initial shock.
‘Let’s have a look at the driver,’ said Holman, ‘maybe I can help.’
They walked to the front of the coach where they found the driver sitting on the grass beside the ditch nursing his head in his hands. He held a bloody handkerchief to his forehead and occasionally moaned as he rocked backwards and forwards. A group of boys stood around him, watching him both anxiously and curiously.
‘Now, Mr Hodges, how are we feeling?’ asked the teacher, hardly a trace of sympathy in his tone.
‘Fucking awful,’ came the muffled reply.
The boys tittered and hid smiles of delight behind shaking hands.
The teacher cleared his throat and stiffly ordered his pupils to go to the back of the coach and stay out of the road. ‘Yes, well, let’s have a look at the cut, Mr Hodges, and perhaps we can do something about it.’
Holman bent down and brought the hand holding the bloodstained handkerchief away from the damaged forehead. The
gash looked worse than it probably was. He took out his own handkerchief and pressed it to the cut, telling the driver to hold it in place.
‘I don’t think it’s serious, but we’d better get you to a hospital right away.’
‘There’s a doctor’s surgery in the town ahead. I’m sure they’ll look after Mr Hodges,’ said the impatient teacher. ‘The only problem is getting him there.’
‘We’ll take him and inform the police at the same time. They’ll soon get a breakdown lorry to you and arrange other transport for the boys. Are you sure none of them are hurt badly?’
‘Yes, quite sure, thank you. It’s really very kind of you. I do hope we won’t have to wait too long, this damp fog won’t be good for the boys.’
As they helped the injured Hodges back to the car, the teacher explained the coach journey to Holman. ‘We’re from Redbrook House, a private boarding school in Andover. We were just on our way back from a nature ramble on the Plain, you know. It was a beautiful morning and the boys get so restless towards the end of term, I had to get them out into the fresh air. I cannot for the life of me imagine where this fog came from.’
Holman cast an anxious eye around him. The fog seemed as dense as ever.
‘Of course, many of the boys’ parents wanted me to send them home when that dreadful earth tremor occurred,’ the master continued, ‘but I was insistent that they remain and finish off the term. Freaks of nature, I told them, happen only rarely, perhaps once in a lifetime, and Redbrook certainly was not going to close down because of the hysterical howling of over-anxious parents. A few of them persisted of course, and I had no choice but to let their offspring go – but I can tell you, they took a very stiff letter with them!’