Industrial Accident-Part two

The girl screamed. Morris screamed back, almost dropping the torch
as he recoiled from the window. He started back at once. 'Wait, I'm
just checking you're - I'm just - I saw yer car, stopped over by the
road here, and I thought maybe you'd had'n accident.' He stopped when
he saw the man's returning frown. Of course, the window was up, the man
hadn't heard a word of it. Morris turned his crooked, bony fingers in a
corkscrew motion, and the window rolled down.
'Sorry. You scared the crap out of us. We just crashed.'
Morris nodded. The man was smiling; he seemed somewhat embarrassed by
the girl's reaction. The girl did too, but relieved at the same time. A
bright band of blood crossed her forehead. An accident then. Morris
looked to the front of the car, to see what had caused it, but the road
was empty. He stepped up to the window, resisting the urge to shine the
torch into the interior, and fixed a reassuring frown of concern on his
forehead. 'What happened? What you hit?'
The man said, 'We don't know. A pig. I think we decapitated it.'
Morris' face underwent a series of expressions before settling on
horror. 'Oh Christ, that'll be one of mine.' Ignoring their stares he
hobbled to the front of the car. He looked for a few seconds, then
returned. 'Well either you knocked it out of the range of my crappy
eyes, or there's nothing there now.'
'It's there,' the woman said. 'It's under the car.'
Morris nodded with a grim smile, as though he didn't believe her, but
believed she believed. 'Well, I'll look more thorough after I get you
two some help.'
'Do you live in that house?' Vicky asked.
He nodded. 'Morris Welk.'
'You're a farmer?'
Morris nodded again.
'I'm Marcus,' the man said. 'This is Vicky, my wife. She's hurt. We
need to call -'
'Don't you worry,' Morris said. 'Already called one. Well, my wife made
me call one, just before I left the house.' He reached into his jacket
and removed a silver flask, then passed it through the window. Marcus
unscrewed the cap with a small smile, and drank. He offered it Vicky,
who shook her head. Her bright, round eyes conveyed all kinds of horror
to Morris; the poor girl was in shock. Marcus returned the flask, and
when Morris stepped back he opened the door. Vicky tried to smile
across as he slid out, and succeeded in creating a kind of horrible
cringing yawn. They both got out. Marcus tried the phone again.
Nothing, just a low peel of thunder in the darkness.
'Don't understand how the hell one've my pigs could've got out,' Morris
said, shaking his head.
Vicky came around the jeep. 'Maybe it wasn't one of yours?'
Morris looked up at her, squinting though the rain. He grunted. 'Come
on back to the house. You both okay to walk?'
Marcus nodded, trying to catch the thunder still fading into the rain.
Vicky waited for him to nod then nodded herself. Marcus said, 'Do you
have a gun?'
Morris frowned. 'I do. A Winchester, but its back at the house.
Why?'
'Whatever we hit, it punched some pretty big holes in the
bonnet.'
'Thought you just said it was a pig?'
Vicky said, 'Well, there's a pig's head in front of the car.'
Morris gave her the look her statement deserved. 'Its head? You knocked
its head off?'
She frowned. 'That wasn't us, unless we hit it pretty hard, which we
didn't. We were only going thirty or -'
A growl came from the wall on the opposite side of the road.
Vicky's words became a scream. Morris saw the shape against the
darkness before Marcus did. He swung the torch around, and in the
second before he dropped it the beam revealed the creature in its
entirety. 'Ho-lee shit,' he screamed as the light hit the road and went
out. 'It's a bear!'
It wasn't a bear.
Marcus' eyes were a little sharper. With its immense, fur-coated
shoulders, gaping, fanged snout, and the three long claws at the end of
each muscled arm, he could understand why Morris might have made the
misdiagnosis. With the exception of only three features, he would have
agreed with the old man. Two of these features were the creatures
horns. The second was the fact that it stood almost twelve foot above
the ground.
It growled again, and seemed to stumble behind the wall. Lightning
scoured the sky a second later, revealing for an instant the
surrounding fields and hills, everything folded in thick shadows. And
no sign of the creature. Marcus turned to shout 'run' and saw Vicky and
Morris already climbing the wall beside the car. Vicky was looking
back, her eyes marbled with fear. 'Marcus!'
He ran, reached the wall, and in his haste to scramble over dropped the
mobile. It landed in the mud at the edge of the field, but he didn't
stop to retrieve it. All three sprinted across the field, through the
waist-high stalks of what Marcus guessed was corn. Londoner, born and
bred, he thought wildly. Thunder flooded the sky, the sound of a giant
ribcage cracking open. He ran, his heart pounding quicker than his
feet, forgetting where he was supposed to be heading, even why he was
running. Until the growl came again, just behind. Vicky, a few feet
ahead, heard it too. Marcus saw her force an extra burst of speed. He
opened his mouth to call after her and something hit him in the back.
At first there was no pain, only an unsettling coldness. It felt like
when you were a kid, and your mates ganged up to pack snow down the
back of your coat. Then a flood of warmth, almost pleasant, until he
realised what it was.
Vicky turned. She saw him stumbling out of the darkness, a few yards
behind, his mouth a terrified ellipse . . . Then she saw him lifted. It
was like in war films, where a soldier steps on a mine, except when
Marcus reached the apex of his rise he stayed there. Then the darkness
behind him started to take shape: a vast, amorphous outline made of
shadow. It was impossible to tell whether the shadow possessed any
depth, only that it was huge, and enraged. It had him in an unseen fist
and was shaking him. It bellowed, though Vicky could see no mouth, the
sound a cross somewhere between fury and strangulation. Her insides
went cold.
'Marcus!'
'Run!' he screamed back, the urgency in his voice threaded with agony.
'Run, run -'
The darkness tore his head off.

Morris heard the creatures roar, and the girl's scream at the exact
same moment as he saw Martha emerge from the kitchen doorway with his
Winchester at her shoulder.
'Get back, Marth!' he shouted, waving at her. His heart was galloping,
every muscle in the back of his legs was on fire. 'It's a bear.' He was
out of the field now, onto the muddy driveway, running between the two
deep parallel trenches made by the tractors wheels. The roar came
again. Thunder, he told himself, knowing that it was not.
'Morris, what?' Martha called back. 'I heard screaming. What
happened?'
Morris stopped running. He turned, shielding his eyes against the rain.
The girl, Vicky, was twenty feet behind. She'd stopped running too, and
was facing back towards the road. Where the hell was her husband? . . .
Ah, just behind, so why'd she scream? He started back into the field,
and saw it.
'Marth?' He said, his voice weak with fear. 'Get back.'
Martha was running along the driveway towards him, her dress rising in
a manner she would no doubt have found distasteful had not the
situation required it. She reached his side and aimed the gun before
she knew what she was aiming for. Morris made a grab for the stock and
she shrugged him off. 'What'm I looking for?'
Vicky was flailing through the stalks towards them. The darkness had
gone.
So had Marcus.

'Ibuprofen,' Martha enunciated each syllable of the word, dropping the
tablets into Vicky's palm. 'Morris uses them for hangovers, which is
close to what you must have.'
Vicky tried to smile, but the muscles in her jaws had been cut.
Martha dabbed the girls forehead with the cloth again and turned to her
husband. 'Well?'
Rain impacted on the roof, and the windows, an angry wind hooo-ed
through the eaves.
Morris faced the window. He'd drawn the curtains around him so that
only the muddy heels of his boots, and the stock of the rifle poked
through. 'Can't see anything.'
'That's because it's dark and raining, and you're half blind, you damn
fool,' Martha said, tipping three tablets into her own hand.
'What the hell was it?' Morris said, half to himself. 'Some kind of big
cat?'
Vicky watched Marcus' head leaving his body. It sailed into the field
like a giant champagne cork, trailing a red arc. She saw his body
enveloped in darkness, and the darkness was roaring. She looked up at
Martha, seeing her for the first time. 'Where's Marcus?'
'That her husband?' Martha whispered, but Vicky caught it.
A hiss came from the curtain, and Morris stepped back. Despite the
orange glow of the fire his face looked pale, and half-alive. 'Where's
the damn phone? Where's that damn ambulance I called for? . . . Where's
the damn phone?'
'Where it always is,' Martha sighed, starting to tremble.
Morris marched past her, into the kitchen.
'Oh for God's sake,' Martha hissed, crossing the room and retrieving
the phone from Morris's armchair. She yelled his name; he came hobbling
back in, took the phone with a tight smile, and inserted his finger
into the last hole. Every turn of the ring hurt, but he ignored it. He
waited for the dialtone. He waited. 'Powers down,' he said, replacing
the phone in its cradle with the finality of a mourner laying a flower
upon the breast of the departed.
'How can the power be down?' Martha frowned.
'Only two ways I can think of.' Morris returned to the window. 'One,
something's blown at Mattingdon Power Station, two, something's knocked
down our power lines.' He cupped a hand to the window, was still a few
seconds, then, 'Can't see far enough.'
'Let me look.'
'Bloody hell, woman, I mean you can't see far enough. It's dark and
raining, in case you hadn't noticed.'
'It took him away,' Vicky said, coming over, and in the same breath,
'Let me look.'
The other two moved aside, studying her face with concern. Morris held
the curtain and she ducked under.
Our baby would have been called Milly if it was a girl, she thought.
Jack if it was a boy.
At first the darkness beyond the glass seemed complete, then streaks of
rain formed in it. Vicky wiped away the fog of her breath, and now she
could see a collection of barrels, just beneath the sill. Rain rapped
upon their lids like fingers.
'Oh bugger!' Morris rasped behind her. 'Here.'
She heard a click, then the surrounding fields flared up beneath the
gaze of two spotlights, posted at either end of the yard. Now she could
see the pig huts in the next field, a community of aluminium houses in
neat rows. Beyond these the driveway, the field, their car.
Dark shapes were moving beside the car.
Vicky felt the coldness in her chest renew itself. It took him away . .
. They took him away.
The shapes were coming over the wall, ten, maybe twelve of them. Each
stood at least three times higher than the top of the wall. They
pounded through the corn like a herd of outsized cattle coming in for
feeding. Vicky tried to make her mind hold this image. Didn't Morris
say he owned cows too? She searched the landscape to the east of the
house, where the tilled earth sloped into a hill. More shapes were
descending the brow. Her eyes had no trouble making out these shapes
because the spotlights angled this way, making their shadows pool long
and narrow behind them. Some were walking upright, some on all fours.
She saw thick, loping arms, distorted heads with horns or pointed
ears.
There were hundreds of them, the low rumble of their approach already
beginning to carry beneath the rain.
Vicky turned to Morris, who jumped at the intensity of her
expression.
'Vicky?' Martha said in a small, tremulous voice.
'We need to block the windows.'
Morris made to duck behind the curtains again, but Vicky stopped him.
'We need to block the windows . . . Where's the gun?'
Morris hoisted it. 'What's out there?'
'How many bullets?'
'What?'
She prodded the barrel. 'How many?'
'One to a barrel,' Morris said. 'Two barrels. There might be another
box in our room. What the hell? Is it coming for the house?' Ignoring
her hand he pushed up to the window.
The creature stared at him. He took in the huge, screaming, fanged
snout, the dark intelligence of its eyes. He fell back, dropping the
shotgun. Vicky caught him but he continued to move, only his mind
paralysed by horror.
Something hit the front door with a bang.
All three looked across with mouths and eyes wide. Two curving pillars
of white, tapered to sharp points, had grown at right angles from the
door, a foot apart. It took Morris a couple of seconds to realise what
they were, and before the realisation reached his heart, the horns had
drawn back.
The cackle of flames from the hearth, the grainy sound of rain on the
roof . . . Then the bang came again, and the door burst open.
The creatures poured in.
Morris brought both hands up to his chest. For a frozen moment he saw
the dozens of twisted, slavering forms, and had time to comprehend the
fact that the bodies, though exaggerated in size and thick with hair,
were human, with the heads of pigs. Even with his poor and failing eyes
he could see that each snout was lined with sharp, white teeth. With
the exception of those few from whom horns protruded, they were
identical. Their snarls grew in volume. He saw the girl struggling in
one of the creatures arms, her scream ending with a dull, cracking
noise. He saw Martha lifted to the ceiling, saw her continue through
the ceiling, her body folding through the plaster as the creature which
thrust her howled and snorted and danced. And, as the darkness began to
crowd his eyes, Morris heard the sound of thunder.

'What went wrong? Nothing went wrong.'
Parker dropped the finger back onto the carpet and looked up, frowning.
Hass hadn't noticed the finger; he was looking at the stalactites of
frozen blood on the ceiling. 'I don't mean with the subjects . . . In
terms of security.'
'Security fucked up,' Parker said.
'Exactly. So two innocent people got killed.'
Beneath the outrageous dome of his environment suit Parker's brow
raised further.
The two of them stood in the charred and debris littered living room of
what remained of the house. The damage was extensive. Long gouges, like
the tracks of a rake, covered the walls and ceiling. Hundreds of
bowling-ball-sized holes had been punched through the floral wallpaper.
Two framed paintings beneath the stairs had been turned into modern
art. The curtains, and the two south-facing windows, were black with
blood, as though a giant hose had pumped it there. In one place an
entire section of the wall had been obliterated, and in the darkness
beyond a white truck could be seen, spotlights bathing the room with
slow sweeps of blue. Wind groaned through the house, and beneath this
the faint, insistent throb of a descending helicopter. Men and women in
white coveralls filed past them, ferrying blackened objects from the
house like worker ants on a forage.
'I'm not kidding,' Has said. 'They weren't the test.' He stooped, and,
taking Vicky's hand in his, traced a gloved finger across the ring
Marcus had paid for with a grand total of eight giro cheques. Parker
had taken out a pad, and was keying something into it. Hass removed the
ring and slipped it into a pocket: 'Beautiful hands. What was she,
thirty?'
Parker consulted his pad. 'Thirty six.'
'What was her name again?'
'Vicky Monroe. Your point, Frank?' The manner with which Hass was
holding the dead girl's hand made him uncomfortable. 'It was
unfortunate. We blocked every road, they still slipped through. '
'You realise the paperwork this slip has caused?' Hass sighed, still
looking at her hand. A malign grin spread across his face. 'Jim Parker,
meet Vicky Monroe.' He tossed the hand to Parker, who had to drop the
finger to catch it. 'Jesus, you idiot,' Parker said scowling. 'Don't
you have any respect?'
Hass said, 'I did until I started this job.'
Parker bagged the hand along with the finger and stood up, groaning
with the effort. 'Anyway, it was just bad luck. Subject 142 could have
run out onto an empty road, instead these poor sods happened to be
filling it. That's bad luck.'
'I call it Divine Intervention.'
'I thought geneticists weren't supposed to believe in God.'
'I don't mean God.' Hass said, catching his irritated reflection in the
others mask. 'I'm agreeing with you. The intervention of Divinely
improbable bad luck. Or I don't know, maybe it was God.'
Parker snorted. Hass was known around the plant as 'Dice' on account of
his tendency to shift camps if a theory was losing weight. 'So, come
on, what have these tests proved, apart from we have the ability to
neutralise two newlyweds, a couple of pensioners, and a
farmhouse?'
Hass surveyed the room. 'It isn't a farmhouse anymore. It's an
abattoir.'
'What have we proved?' Parker said again.
'We've proved that the soup will take any ingredient.'
Parker scowled, not understanding.
Hass scowled back. 'You can put anything in the genetic mix. Once you
find the fixing agent, in this case Lirium D, you can engineer whatever
you like. Also, we've proved that the creatures can be controlled. That
was always the biggest negative factor. And we've identified their pain
threshold. That car was going thirty . . . You saw 142 just walk away.
What else have got, let me -?'
'What about 142, and the pig?'
Hass shrugged, and was silent. Both of them were looking down at the
remains of Morris' head. 'It saw a mate,' he said at last. 'But so
what, it doesn't necessarily mean they carry race memories? It doesn't
mean anything more than Nature's as resilient as we always thought
Her.'
'Yes, but it fucked it, then clawed off its head,' Parker
frowned.
'Well, like I said, it might have recognised its genealogical
derivative. You've got to remember, these hybrids are engineered at the
molecular level. We've rewired their brains with only two emotions.
Hunger and rage.'
'Explain the intercourse then.'
Hass couldn't.
Parker nodded approvingly and turned back to the head. The two were
silent a few seconds more, like mourners at a graveside, then Parker
said, 'So we'll get the go-ahead?'
Hass picked at some invisible irritation on his suit and lowered his
voice with mock confidentiality: 'You know Dennis Price, from the
Farm?'
Parker nodded. He'd known Dennis 'Vincent' Price a lot longer than
Hass, and Hass knew it.
'Well, I called him about an hour ago,' Hass said. 'He says the
website's filling up with hits. They're signing it, Jim. We'll get the
green light.'
'Good,' Parker smiled despite himself. 'We'll run out another batch.
There are hundreds of places, and people like these. Make sure the
papers know it was an industrial accident. You can sort out the
details, Frank.'
'Cheers,' Hass said with a sour grin.
Parker smiled back, raised the pad before him and ticked a digital
box. 'I hear we're leaning more towards the bull next time?'
Hass nodded. 'Every specimen will be different, if only because each
strand of DNA is different. The next batch for instance -' He stooped,
wrapped his fingers in the old man's white, blood stained hair, and
lifted the head. 'Maybe there'll even be a little bit of granddad in
it?'
'You're a sick boy,' Parker said with a look of contempt.
'I'm the future,' Hass smiled back.