16

There were times, during the two or three weeks of the Madness, when Philip thought the killing would never stop.

The little Garth Farm community had been better prepared than most, because Philip had been able to warn them of the violence and incurability of the Madness: After the first incident when a madman blundered suddenly into the farmyard and half-strangled Harry's wife before Harry shot him, there was no argument about what had to be done.

From then on, a duty roster of armed sentries was drawn up and nobody was to be out of sight of them at any time. There was plenty of work to be done in the fields if the farm was to be kept running but they always went out in parties of at least three, with an armed look-out who kept round his neck the binoculars they had found in the house. The madmen were easily identifiable even at a distance; after you had seen one or two, you could no longer mistake them for sane people who were merely distressed or ill. So since the defenders of Garth Farm had good Army rifles, the binoculars, by giving more warning, helped to make the necessary act a little less gut-wrenching by depersonalizing it slightly. The attacker could be picked off at a greater distance, according to how good a shot you were, instead of waiting until you were face-to-face as would have been necessary with a shotgun. At first the defenders had hoped that a warning shot might scare the madmen off, because none of them had any desire to kill them unless they actually attacked. But the first few tries proved that this was an illusory hope. The madmen ignored bullets. They even ignored wounds if the first shot merely winged them. They seemed motivated by one consuming obsession – to close with and destroy any sane person they saw. (For some reason no one could explain they rarely attacked each other.) So the rule became simple; shoot on sight and shoot to kill.

Garth Farm seemed to attract.them – perhaps because it stood alone on a slight rise, visible from several kilometres away in the Kettering direction. Once the Madness took hold there were shootings every day. The toll ranged from two on the most peaceful day to seven on the worst. Light seemed to increase the attacks – bright sunlight meant maximum danger, an overcast night apparently none at all but there were several attacks around the full moon when the sky was clear.

Disposing of the bodies was an unpleasant and time-absorbing business; an old quarry in the woods about a kilometre away provided a cliff over which they could be tipped into mercifully concealing trees, for burial was out of the question. But they had to be carted there under armed guard as always and this made the farmwork intermittent.

None of the defenders managed to become indifferent to the slaughter, with the possible exception of Harry's younger brother who had a vicious streak and seemed ' almost to enjoy it. Strangely, Harry himself betrayed the most distress; he had been a regular soldier and had seen action in both of the small localized wars which had disfigured the 1990s. But that had been the killing of armed enemies as sane as himself, and this, by its very contrast, went against all his soldier's instincts. So in some ways it was even harder for him than for the others who had never been trained in 'honourable' warfare. For Harry was both briskly practical and unsubtly honourable, so while he did not hesitate over the necessity he could not hide the anguish. He never put it into words except in the simple phrase 'poor sods', but somehow that muttered epitaph was more poignant than most graveside orations.

After two weeks of shooting came the first signs of a change. They began finding the bodies of madmen who had died of their own accord.

They had expected it, logically, having reached the same conclusions as Geraint Lloyd; the exposed, underfed, self-injuring lunatics could not survive for long. All the same, the first bodies took them by surprise. They all seemed, by some bizarre mercy of Providence, to have died in their sleep; they were curled up under the lee side of hedges or against haystacks (one had even crept into an outlying barn), as though in the hour of death they had rediscovered their lost instinct to seek shelter. That they had been madmen and not mere refugees was beyond question – they had the torn and festering fingernails, the encrusted eyes, the strangely emaciated necks and the yellowish pallor which the defenders had come to recognize as symptomatic.

There was in fact one other phenomenon of these 'natural' deaths to which only Betty was a chance witness and of which she could not bring herself to tell even Philip: a last-minute return of sanity. It was she who discovered the shelterer in the barn. Philip was a hundred metres away, on armed guard, and Tonia was near him. Betty, needing a bucket, had gone to the barn alone – breaking the rules a little but all was quiet (the madmen were usually heard before they were seen) and she had an automatic in her belt. She came across the man without warning, when she was almost on him, lying foetally curled in the hay. He was unmistakably a madman and her hand flew to her gun, but he did not move, merely stared at her, and Betty (breaking the rules again) hesitated. After a few seconds, the man smiled, said 'Hullo there!' in a calm friendly voice, closed his eyes and died.

Betty somehow knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he was dead. She was so certain that she put away her gun and knelt beside him, bursting into tears for the first time since the earthquake. Philip heard her sobs and came running. When he found her with the body, he helped her up, soothing her, saying 'I know, love, it's bloody… I know… I know…' again and again.

No, darling, you don't, she thought as she clung to him; not this new heart-breaking thing. And I'm not going to tell you. I hope you never find out. One of us is enough.

Over the next few days, the number of discovered bodies increased and the number of attacks grew fewer. At last the attacks ceased altogether. The Madness was over. They carted the last bodies off their land and began, warily and a little increduously, to relax.

Even the BBC, in the first of its brief bulletins that had meant anything at all since the flood warnings, announced that 'reports from Government agents throughout the country' showed that the last of the madmen (whom the bulletins called 'afflicted categories') was dead. It ended with a vaguely worded exhortation to 'those of us who have survived' to form small self-supporting communities and live off the land.

'Thanks very much,' Harry said scornfully as he switched off. "We're doing that already and so's everyone else with any sense, I imagine. Bloody so-called Government!

Whose fault was the Madness anyway? Who didn't tell us about the vinegar masks till it was too bloody late?'

'Did you notice the "Government agents" bit?' Philip asked. 'That was deliberate, I'd say, knowing how Beehive thinks. Plant the idea that Big Brother is watching you, wherever you are.'

'You bet I noticed… Why didn't they tell us something useful, like how many people are still alive, and where? Let their bloody spies earn their living… I wonder how many are alive? We've seen nobody for days, except the Robertsons at the farm down the hill and that small bunch we saw on the move yesterday.'

'Yes… I wonder why they didn't stop? They saw us, too.'

'Just being cautious, I expect. People will be, for quite a while. You can't blame them.'

In the sudden empty peace of the land, the Garth Farm group were not, as it turned out, cautious enough.

Half a kilometre from the farm stood an isolated, practically undamaged cottage to which Betty and Tonia had taken a fancy. Sleeping accommodation at the farm was a little cramped and if Philip, Betty and Tonia moved into the cottage, the three single men could move out of the dormitory into warmer bedrooms. They could still cook and feed communally but everyone would have more elbow-room. It seemed a good idea to all concerned and the move was made.