Guy N. Smith Throwback

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they are, we don't know if anything can be done. Certainly the atmosphere is
now clear. We do not know whether the victims will die in a short period or
whether they will live a normal life-span.' 'And the whole world suffers
because of Lebanon and Syria.' Rankine spoke bitterly, showed his personal
feelings for the first time. 'Damn the Russians, they've threatened us with
nuclear war for three decades and it was all a blind. Missile bases and
counter missile bases, protests on Greenham Common and a lot of other places,
and all the time we never guessed where the real danger lay. Now it's too
late. They haven't even had to raze the western world to the ground! They can
just walk in and take over whenever they like and we can't do a damned thing
to stop 'em.'
Thank you, Professor.' The Prime Minister rose to his feet, brushed flecks of
dust from his suit. He still had to maintain the image he had created as the
best-dressed man in Britain, according to a recent media poll. He had the job
of inspiring hope and confidence however he felt personally. 'We'll let you
get on with your work- If there are any significant developments please notify
me immediately. In the meantime we have an urgent cabinet meeting upstairs.'
A crisis meeting. Eight government ministers all looking to Caldecott to come
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up with the answer because that was what he had been elected for. Another
Churchill, except that World War II was a skirmish compared to this.
Large-scale wall-maps showed every town, village and hamlet in Britain. Red
drawing-pins denoted areas which were known to have suffered heavy casualties.
Blue pins showed where there were pockets of survivors trying to maintain law
and order, fighting for a return to normality. There were an awful lot of
blank spaces awaiting a red or a blue pin.
And the Russians still had not come. They weren't in any hurry, there was no
hurry. Next week, next month, next year, it would all be the same.
'Let us take the major cities first.' Caldecott used his wooden pointer, was
reminded of those far-off days when he had lectured at Oxford; golden days
which would never come again. You were lucky if you were left to indulge in
nostalgia. 'London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, the pattern is much the
same. Wild mobs are on the rampage, their only interest being food and , . .
rape!' He shuddered. The food targets seem to be basically butchers' shops and
abattoirs, whole carcasses being lorn apart, the meat devoured raw. Their
hunger appeased, the men turn to women, any women with whom to satisfy a
carnal desire. The remnants of our law-keeping forces are stretched beyond
their limits, outnumbered by thousands to one. Our only hope is to withdraw
them totally to a place of safety and plan a definite strategy. We cannot win
back the cities at present so we must abandon them.'
Murmurs, not dissent, but horror. Men who were accustomed to facing up to
unpleasant truths found themselves backing off.
There are survivors.' Caldecott's voice quavered slightly. "Somehow we must
communicate with them, reorganise them if our country is not to be annihilated
by mob rule, the law of primitive Man, for our enemy is our own kind, our own
people robbed of their minds, reverted to their ancestors by a cruel and
unscrupulous foe. Almost every means of communication has now failed.' Don't
ask me right now how we are going to reorganise because I don't know. It might
be an impossibility. 'At the moment we are waiting upon Professor Reitze and
his team of scientists. They are working the clock round to find a way to
combat this vile and despicable means of war.'
Silence.
There wasn't anything else left to say, nothing to argue about, a government
that was suddenly devoid of politics, their only manifesto one of survival.
They could only wait.
Reitze checked through his notes again after the PM and the Defence Minister
had left. A hint of a worried frown, his forehead creased and smoothing out,
Reitze becoming his old emotionless self again. It wasn't an act, this was how
he was, what made him tick. If he died tomorrow he wouldn't know anything
about it so what was the use of worrying? Slight concern that perhaps they had
overlooked something somewhere, something just too obvious. They would check
again. And again. But he had to admit that it was a hopeless task; not
conceding defeat, just accepting facts. That was the hardest part of all,
admitting that you were beaten.
He lit another Camel, pressed the buzzer on his desk. A few seconds later a
sliding door opened and another white-coated scientist entered, A younger man
than Reitze, tall and fair-haired, eyes red-rimmed as though he hadn't slept
in the last thirty-six hours, just the odd catnap on the couch in the
rest-room adjoining the lab.
'Brian,' Reitze looked up, almost smiled but not quite, 'we're gonna name this
one the Evolution Bug. I don't reckon we can come up with anything else now.
We've just gotta check in case we missed something, but I think we've gone as
far as we can go and I'll have to tell them that soon. The ultimate in
mutation. If we had lived in the Stone Age that's how we would have been,
immune to diseases which would destroy mankind today and these throwbacks are
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just the same. Immune to anything we can give them because their body cells
will resist everything. Evolution is the only answer, civilisation will have
to start all over again! In a million years' time they'll be finding skeletons
and scratching their heads, wondering how the hell civilisation reached its
peak and went back again. I'm wondering whether those who have escaped can
survive, even the bastards who started all this. We will be the ones without
body resistance, diseases developing which modern medicine has never come
across.'
'I see.' Brian Newman nodded. 'As a matter of fact that occurred to me but I
kept it to myself.'
'We'll have to do just that. There's no point in panicking everybody and if
we're right there's not a goddamn thing you or I or anybody else can do about
it. In the meantime we just keep on working, hoping. And if you're a praying
man, pray.'
Reports came in slowly over the next few days. The Continent had suffered
badly, West Germany, France and Italy in chaos. Switzerland seemed to have
fared better than most due to government legislation that all new houses had
to be fitted with fall-out shelters. No warning except that strange and
terrible things were befalling the French and Italians so the Swiss had dived
for cover.
Nothing at all from the eastern-bloc countries. No communications. They might
have been wiped out, they might be lurking safely below ground. There was no
way of telling. The Kremlin was silent. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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