THE KILLER OF THE DARKNESS

EPISODE THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-TWO

The town throbbed with tense excitement when I came down the stairs two hours later.

I had prepared myself for what awaited me as, I stepped out of Joanne's flat. The wind speed so much higher that I feared. Taking the metal steps with ultimate care, I coughed and breathed into my gloves, to warm my hands, that started to feel cold as soon as I stepped outside.

The wind on Onehouse Island never howled or shrieked but moaned instead. A pitched, unutterable eerie ululation: a requiem for the damned or the agony of some soul lost in torment.

Its desolate threnody boomed and faded in the lower registers of sound with an intensity which I had never experienced in the 29th century. The wind's metaphorical fingers plucked at the tight strung wires of the telephone lines and houses to provide its own whistling obligatory alien music.

I passed a group a woman standing huddled at one corner and became conscious of their eyes following me. They had seen the gun at my side.

As I reached the police station, I bumped into Roome and Allum coming out.

I stepped back.

"Reporting for duty. What next to do?"

Roome nodded somewhere over in the direction of the Golf Club.

"I'm just going to do the rounds out in the fields before night-fall. Probably somebody will need relieving now; it is bloody cold out. Would you be able to take over if needed?"

"Sure."

We moved up the street and turned off at the last house, striking out into the clean two-foot-deep snow that in places had been churned up by the passing of others.

The outer frozen crust took our weight for a split-second, before our feet sank into the softer-under snow, made the going tough and laborious.

We reached the first patrol point which had been set up in a cow shelter near a river that flowed into the sea a half-a-mile away.

The sky appeared to be leaden and gloomy, with heavy clouds blocking all the view of the entire island, leaving us with the illusion of being flat and all the same height in the failing light.

It did not look like snow would fall later, but that would not be necessary, as the wind blew through the air millions of driving, needle-pointed ice spicules that swept towards us out of the impenetrable darkness to the east, that stung the exposed area of our face, like a thousand infuriated hornets.

Even now to explain the sharp, exquisite pain, as the weather in the future is warmer, would be impossible. Icecaps melted, seas rising, and countries coastlines gone. The pain vanished almost in the moment of arrival as the countless sub-zero spicules dug deep with their anaesthetizing needles drove out all sensation from the skin.

The group of men on duty were all huddled inside the shelter, gathered around a smoky fire.

"It's f*****g cold out here."

I recognized the ashen-faced speaker as David Beal, the local coach and taxi owner. We all joked with him as we entered the shed.

The collection of firearms frightened me. Some pieces would do more harm to the owner than anything attacking the beast. But morale, I decided, appeared to be high.

Two of the men were over seventy and served in the local Home Guard. They also had served in the first world war, surviving Ypres and the Somme to keep us all in stitched with their memories of the odd, good times they experienced in a time of hell on earth.

We were still chuckling when I suddenly lost my grin. I c****d my head, concentrating.

"Listen."

They did not listen.

Roome looked around puzzled and caught sight of my face.

"What?"

"I am trying to listen to something."

Roome raised his head.

"Hold up everybody. Keep quiet."

At first, we only sensed the moaning of the wind and the crackling of the fire.

We all heard it, rising from the low moan of air that passed between a gap in the roof and wall of the shed.

The clatter grew until no mistake, could be made to the source of the sound.

"It's a plane."

A mad rush to the door followed.

Outside in the darkness, snow-filled clouds barely three to four hundred feet high, passed like smoke above our heads.

Everybody craned their heads upwards.

I stood apart from the rest of the group, memories flooding in. My training helping me to catch sight before the rest. Flying straight at us, from the direction of the North Sea, less than fifty feet up.

I pointed.

"Look!"

Against the lighter water, the distinctive shape of a Junkers Ju 52 grew, seeming to fill the sky, aiming straight for us as the noise grew from a whine, into a roar, into thunder.

Everyone except me, flung themselves flat into the sleet as the huge plane ripped overhead, the ice-filled wind slashing at our clothes.

I just stood stock still, watching as it lifted to the right and climbed away, it is navigation light on the tail fin flashing red against the dark slate-coloured sky. It disappeared into the cloud base.

Roome picked himself up, brushing at his clothes, his face alive with excitement.

"Christ, you're a cool cookie. I told you someone would come."

"I think our day, has just got worse!"

"What? How can it?"

"That is a Junker Ju 52, carrying men on board who want their toy back along with the pilot."