The Nightmare Man: (Child of the Vodyanoi) Page 18

  They cleaned his upper arm with cold spirit. The pin-prick was almost undetectable, but the pressure of the liquid as it was injected into the muscle made him grit his teeth.

  It was over in seconds. Already the cold, and the shock, were making him shiver. He put his jacket back on quickly.

  Only then did he stand in front of Howard and confront him. “You’re Russian, aren’t you?”

  Grim faced, Howard nodded.

  “Yes. My real name is Kornilov—Major Vladimir Kornilov.”

  Slowly Dunlop shook his head.

  “Perhaps I should have guessed. That suicide jump, and the tense way your men were behaving.”

  Kornilov took out a cigarette and offered one. Dunlop shook his head.

  “What is it I have to do—for my people?”

  With his foot Kornilov tapped the box left by the two marines who had given Dunlop his injection.

  “This is more of the anti-toxin. Take it back to your town. Make everybody have it.”

  Dunlop couldn’t conceal his surprise.

  “You would do that for us?”

  “Of course.” Kornilov placed a cigarette between his lips - and lit it with a precise movement of arm and lighter. He inhaled, removed the cigarette in the same precise way, and blew out the smoke.

  “I was not lying to you before. Our job is to get in here, recapture the Vodyanoi and its pilot, and get out again. But I am also under orders to safeguard if necessary the population of this island. The people of Soviet Russia have only feelings of great friendship to the people of other countries. They would not wish to see this appalling disease spread here.”

  Dunlop snorted

  “Nor take the responsibility in the eyes of the world. Why didn’t you start injecting earlier, in the town? You could have without revealing your identity.”

  Intently, Kornilov examined the burning end of his cigarette.

  “You must understand that ZA 42 took a long time to develop. I was instructed not to hand over the antidote unless I was fully sure a biological incident might occur.”

  The meaning behind the words suddenly made their appalling impact on Dunlop.

  “And now you are?”

  Kornilov drew again on his cigarette.

  “No. But anyway, I will not take the chance.”

  Dunlop stared back searchingly into the Russian’s eyes. “Thank you.”

  Embarrassed, Kornilov looked away.

  “I don’t like these things. War should be fought by soldiers.”

  There was a burst of static from the field radio set. One of the marines manning it entered into a message exchange, amplified on its speaker. Kornilov looked at his watch.

  “We shall be lifted in less than eight minutes.”

  He spoke into his own radio. Immediately Dunlop could see the effect on the far-flung firefly-like torches. They began to bunch up and then grow larger.

  “You have called back the search parties. Was that for the pilot?”

  Kornilov didn’t reply immediately. He dropped the stub of his cigarette to the snow and stared at the winking spot of red. until it disappeared.

  “Time has run out for us. We dare not delay longer.” Despite his efforts, Dunlop couldn’t hide his distaste.

  “That ... that ... man has already killed. When he’s caught he’ll have to face trial.”

  Kornilov remained silent, staring out at the returning search parties.

  Dunlop tried again.

  “He is nothing but an animal.”

  It got through.

  Kornilov’s head jerked round.

  “Major Genyeva was a fine officer.”

  “Was?”

  A great sadness came over Kornilov. His shoulders for the first time drooped, his voice was bitter.

  “That is what I said. We were in the same class together at Military School. Vasily was an excellent athlete, well liked by his men. He had already been decorated for valour against the Chinese.”

  Kornilov looked imploringly into Dunlop’s face.

  “He was a parachutist—like us. I beg you to remember that.”

  Thinking of Sheila Anderson and Symonds, Dunlop said, “I’ll try. By why do you keep referring to him as though he was dead?”

  Kornilov looked away, his voice turning hard.

  “Because he is.”

  He shrugged and carried on quickly as he saw the relief flooding into Dunlop’s face.

  “Oh, not his body; I mean his mind. It’s gone. That thing walking around is not Vasily Genyeva—it is a madman.”

  aintly, in the ominous silence, a low rumble swelled and died.

  In the heightened silence, Dunlop grappled with the frightening picture Kornilov was presenting.

  “I still don’t understand. Why is he mad? Was he before the sub. crash?”

  Again the question seemed to present Kornilov with problems in answering. He finally came to a decision.

  “I will tell you.”

  He walked a few paces and then retraced his steps, stamping his feet in the snow to keep them warm.

  “Have you ever driven a car, Dunlop, and felt it was an extension of yourself, as though you were the brain and the rest of the car was your body? That you could actually feel the strains being imposed upon it, and tingled with the awareness of things near to the outer skin?”

  Dunlop nodded. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Well, in the Vodyanoi that concept has been turned into reality.”

  With a rush of revulsion, Dunlop started to comprehend, but Kornilov carried on as if he now had to unburden the whole thing in detail.

  “When Vasily volunteered for a new fighting unit he was not told the full nature of what was going to happen. Even now I have only found out some of the facts during my briefing for this raid.”

  A cold feeling spread down Dunlop’s spine. He steeled himself to ask: “What actually happened to him?”

  The voice that replied was choked with emotion.

  “When they’d finished with him he was only complete when he was in the Vodyanoi. When he leaves it, he leaves part of himself behind. I have seen others; there is ...” He faltered. “... there is some sort of panel inset into the bone at the base of the skull.”

  Dunlop was horrified, remembering his premonition when he first saw the craft on the beach.

  “Should you be telling me this?”

  Looking levelly at him, Kornilov shook his head as the low rumble came again, and this time did not die away.

  “No.”

  The radio crackled, the voice louder and more imperative. Immediately four ‘marines’ shot forward on their skis, moving from flare to flare as they lit the cross.

  Kornilov nodded at them.

  “No, I should not tell you, but we must pull out, and we have not found Vasily.”

  He spat the next words out.

  “They finished him as a man. For his wife’s peace of mind I ask of you...”

  He hesitated, Dunlop aware that what Kornilov was going to say next was very difficult for him.

  “As one parachute soldier to another, only one favour in exchange for the anti-toxin.”

  Dunlop hesitantly took back his revolver from a marine who had moved forward at a hand signal from Kornilov.

  “What do you want?”

  Before he replied, Kornilov waited for his man to move away. The rumble had now grown to a roar, the cross burning wildly as the other flames were extinguished by plunging them into the snow. The ‘marines’ began forming up into companies. Kornilov had to shout above the noise as it rose to a crescendo.

  “Kill him.”

  He saw the startled expression on Dunlop’s face.

  “Please. For his sake, do not let him be taken.”

  A wind forced down on them, blowing the powdered snow in great whirling curtains, the flames leaping and cracking, the columns of men hunched forward, their clothes ripping and tugging. The smell of burnt kerosene was overpowering.

  Suddenly, like some
apocalyptical happening, fierce searchlights bathed them in a harsh white light from the sky.

  Kornilov seized Dunlop’s hand, holding it in an iron grip.

  “Be merciful. Kill him.”

  He let go, pulled himself up and saluted, Russian style, side of the hand forward.

  Without another word he turned on his heel and ran to his men through the man-made blizzard.

  Down on to the landing zone settled a large sand-coloured Ml-8 transport helicopter, the multi-bladed rotor whirling and flashing in the light, the huge red star on its side still a shock to Dunlop.

  Quickly the Vodyanoi was loaded on, followed by half of the men, running forward in a double column, heads reflexly ducked against the still turning blades.

  In less than a minute the helicopter was lifting up, engine screaming, blades chopping the air, the white clouds of snow following it up. It moved away forwards, the searchlights extinguished. As the machine slid away into the night, only the light flashing on the small vertical stabilising rotor marked its progress for a brief moment.

  No sooner had it cleared the area than a second pair of searchlights split the night, coming in behind the first..

  This time Dunlop recognised the distinctive shape of an Ml-24 gunship, the twin air intakes of the Isotov engines above the cabin staring forward like black empty eyes. ,

  It touched down, the restless snow billowing up again around the remaining men as they started forward.

  The last man on was Kornilov. He looked back briefly, just the once, foot resting on the hatch. Then he turned, took the reaching hands, and was pulled in even as the helicopter lifted away and the lights were switched off.

  The engine noise diminished rapidly, the helicopters keeping low and heading fast for the sea.

  Dunlop stood rock still, the silence descending around him until it was deafening. Finally the last flare spluttered and went out, plunging him into darkness.

  24

  A little whisper of wind touched his face, and sighed softly as it started down the long valley. After the noise, the running grim faced men, the frightening revelations, the loneliness was numbing.

  He slowly traversed the dark, empty landscape. Somewhere out there was a dangerous killer, a man without a mind.

  But there was no movement, nothing. It was like the end of the world; black, empty, no sign of life.

  He shivered, but not with the cold. He was imagining the lifeless streets of Inverdee with only the dogs moving among the corpses. And Fiona, face bloated and pock-marked, nose bleeding, eyes bulging and fixed, the flies moving around and into her sweet mouth.

  Grimly he picked up the medical case and started down the slope, moving as fast as he dare. The way back was easy to follow, marked by the tracks from their passage up. He let the skis settle and find their own way.

  The valley closed in, strangely contoured rock that he had not noticed before narrowing the path to a single forbidding track.

  He stopped and listened. There was no sound but the wind. He gritted his teeth. If it was anywhere, this is where he might run into trouble. Gently he eased himself forward.

  Every corner he turned he expected to be confronted by that terrible shape. But with the case in one hand, and the one ski stick in the other, he could not have his gun out and ready.

  It took five agonising minutes before he was aware that the steep hillside was releasing its grip on him. Like a fist opening, the sides of snow and rock receding.

  As he skied clear the eastern sky grew lighter, heralding the new day.

  He breathed a sigh of relief and crammed on speed. The way ahead showed clearer as he sped down the valley, the snow showering in banks of spray as he weaved from side to side. His face began to freeze with the rushing air and watering eyes, his vision blurring.

  He took a shallow curve and headed down towards the forest. The ground levelled out. To keep his speed up Dunlop pushed with his stick, soon panting with the effort of thrusting forward.

  Through his blurred vision he could see the path into the trees, the firebreak stretching ahead as straight as a motorway. He gritted his teeth, put his head down with the effort, and entered the forest.

  It was darker, only the strip of snow in contrast standing out white and clear.

  He never saw it step out of the trees. One moment he was alone, moving through a northern wilderness of ice, the next he was not.

  Even before he lifted his eyes from the snow at his feet, he knew what he would see. It was as if he was trapped in some surrealistic film, being drawn down a great white highway to the terrible colossus standing legs apart, towering at the end of the road.

  Perhaps it was some trick of the perspective that made it seem so large, its black pointed cowl seeming to stand above the tree line, silhouetted against the last of the stars still showing in the lighter eastern sky.

  He stopped pushing with his ski stick, but still he glided on and on, as if drawn by some irresistible force to the presence of this nightmarish creature. Finally, with a last quiet hiss of the skies on the packed frozen snow, he came to a gentle halt.

  Silence.

  It was still too dark to see anything clearly, but of one thing he was frighteningly aware. Whereas Kornilov’s sergeant had worn a protection suit of nightmarish appearance, here the nightmare had become reality.

  Perhaps it was because of what he knew it was capable, perhaps because Kornilov had warned of a thing without a mind, perhaps because of the strange setting. Whatever the reason, Dunlop knew he was in the presence of the living embodiment of his most primitive fears.

  Some snatch of conversation with Inskip, or was it Fiona, flashed into his mind.

  The Nightmare Man.

  The cold of the ground seemed to reach up into him, joining him in one immobile part with the frozen earth.

  Like a transfixed rabbit before a stoat he could only watch, mesmerised as the ‘thing’ moved, not slowly, but with a sudden strange jerking of the limbs, as though it was only half in control of the muscles.

  It was coming for him.

  It would envelope him; take his life and hold it in hideous contempt, squeezing it into a perpetual limbo of terror, at this thing’s command for eternity.

  The gun was in its holster. He had time to set his stick down, unbutton the flap, take it out, aim slowly, deliberately, carefully, and then empty the chamber into the thing’s heart.

  He had the time, but his arm would not move.

  It was getting lighter. He could see now the black congealed blood caked around the baboon-like jaws, the steel frame twisted and jagged, giving a grinning, mind-bending terror to an already brutal face.

  One of the eyepieces was gone, the wild huge eye set against a soft pink surround looked like a separate creature as it moved in the same violent jerky way as the limbs.

  The figure stopped, only that demented eye continuing to roam, ceaselessly from side to side.

  For nearly a minute the silence was absolute, until it was broken by a dry rustling sound as it scuttled forward another few yards, and stopped again.

  And like a crab it was utterly motionless, except for that eye. It seemed even more to live on its own, inhabiting the socket like an animal within an animal, a symbiosis of unearthly, unliving things. The eye showed where: the limbs moved and killed. Like two different animals, forced to work together to survive in the absence of the brain.

  It scuttled forward again, and stopped. Only once more, and it would envelope him, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing.

  The eye stopped its wild swinging and steadied on-him. Dunlop could feel death in that stare.

  The black rubber mask lifted forward, vibrated, and then sank back with each rush of air in the corrugated flexible tube.

  The breathing grew faster and stronger, fierce grunts coming in time to the throbbing, distorting face. The. arms jerked up, the great gloved hands black with dried blood reaching out for Dunlop. The smell of the creature’s foetid breath snatch
ed at his stomach.

  And then it happened.

  It started from one of the grunts, a long low growl that rose up into a blood-freezing scream of demented human laughter. It broke the hypnotic spell.

  Dunlop jerked backward, retching with revulsion, and fell on to his back, struggling to get his gun out, feet trapped by the skis. It jerked forward on top of him, legs astride his body, and looked down at him.

  As he got the gun free, the black mask lifted even more with the laboured breathing. From his low position he caught sight of hideous worm-infested decaying flesh. The smell was not its breath.

  His finger tightened on the trigger as the face grew bigger and bigger, the whole of his vision filled with the growing, enormous mask.

  As the gun in his hand exploded, the full weight of the man-creature smashed into him, the last thing he remembered before he blacked out was his own voice screaming in pure animal terror.

  He was trapped, unable to move, up to his chest in foul smelling swamp. And something was lurking in the green slime. He could sometimes see the ripple on the surface as it moved—there it was again. As he watched, the ripple suddenly turned towards him, and disappeared. It was coming for him. The fear was physical. His body beneath the water began to quake, anticipating the first touch of some awful slimy coil, some fanged mouth.

  Or was it so awful. In some perverse way he was excited.

  The expectancy of something so hidden from him, so secretly loathsome was … was ...

  He couldn’t find the words, but his body beneath the slime was warm and expectant. Only his head was cold, tense, screaming—yes screaming; he could hear his own voice.

  Something brushed his stomach, he was sure of it: a tingle ran right through his body. Suddenly it was coiling around him, squeezing his chest until he couldn’t breathe. The screaming died, ending in a choking sob.

  Dunlop came to with his mouth wide open, teeth pressed against the bloodied black mask, the huge eye opposite his. It was still alive, he could feel a deep rumbling in its chest.

  With a scream that started in his soul he thrust his hand under the vicious jaws and pushed with all his might. What followed would live with Dunlop all his life.

  With a squelching noise the mask and pipe came free. As the body rolled off him, Dunlop had a glimpse of a necrotic slimy mass, one eye hanging down on its stalk, worms moving away from the light as they wriggled in the bony nasal passages.