Simon Clark by The Night of the Triffids

Author:The Night of the Triffids
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-19T14:38:10+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Revenant

‘ONE radio message. Just one. Surely you can give me that?’

I was up against a brick wall.

Sam Dymes shook his head, genuinely regretful.

‘But,’ I argued, ‘I need to send a message back to my people on the Isle of Wight.

You can see why?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then let me warn them that Torrence is still alive. And that, what’s more, he’s planning to send an invasion force.’

We were standing on the banks of the river as this discussion took place, while a sun that was nearer purple than red slipped down beyond the horizon.

‘The weather conditions will be perfect for short-wave transmission,’ I insisted.

‘Sorry. I really am. But no can do.’ Sam spoke in his relaxed Southern accent despite my bluster. ‘David. Torrence has ships out looking for us. If he picks up our broadcast and gets a fix then he’s going to come storming up that river, spitting fire and fury like nothing you’ve ever seen before.’

I ran my hand through my hair. Frustrating, damned frustrating, yet Sam had a point. In the secrecy of their location lay the heart of the Foresters’ survival. During the three days I’d been here I’d heard ample tales of Torrence’s banditry and slaughter.

I sighed. ‘You see my concerns? I could be sitting here in the sun while Torrence’s invasion force rips into my people back home.’

‘David, listen to me. That won’t happen yet.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because he’s going to divert his manpower into Operation Avalanche. He’s going to need all the medics he has to work in the hospitals on the mass fertilization programme. He’ll also require the services of his ships’ crews, too. After all, egg cells won’t fertilize themselves, will they?’

I sighed again. ‘Point taken.’

‘In any event, from what you say the Isle of Wight has quite a formidable force of aircraft. Torrence can’t risk losing his ships on the off chance your people won’t fight back. No, he’d planned on using you as the Trojan horse to bring ashore a team of saboteurs and commandos in civilian clothes. It doesn’t take a lot of figuring to see that they would seize airfields, then hold them until Torrence’s warships brought in reinforcements. You follow?’

‘I follow.’

‘Ready for that cold beer yet?’

And that, as they say, was that.

Nevertheless, my time at the base wasn’t unpleasant. The amiable, gangling Sam Dymes was a good companion with his idiosyncratic way of speaking, liberally peppered with uhms, ahms and long thoughtful mmmmms. I found myself believing that he couldn’t be responsible for the shooting of Gabriel Deeds back in New York.

Moreover, I believed him when he explained to me that Torrence’s prosperous community was built on the sweating backs of slave labour. Slaves felled the trees that provided wood alcohol for motor fuel. Slaves worked the coal mines until they died of lung disease or sheer exhaustion, never seeing the light of day from one month to the next. Female slaves were shackled in baby factories where they were forced into pregnancy year after year.

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