Famine (2 page)

She was tugging at his shoulder before he put the receiver down, her face alive with alarm and concern.

“Dave's out in that field!” she cried. “I must go and get him. He's expecting me, he'll be waiting for me, just where it happened. But I can't go alone, please don't let me go alone!”

The hard, hooded eyes sharpened, the trap of a mouth set for a moment, then relaxed.

“We've got to wait for the police,” he said with mild obstinacy. “There's nothing more to it. We've got to wait for the police.”

 

 

David Fordham was hot, tired, satisfied, and just a little bit puzzled. He had done more work, single-handed, than he had expected, the storm damage had been isolated in one corner of the field, and if the weather held, he would get it finished tomorrow. He climbed down from the big, clumsy-looking machine which did the work of so many men, wiped his forehead, wished he had some cold tea left, but knew Betty would have a bottle of something with her. Betty the Reliable, who anticipated his every need. Bless her! He pulled a plastic cover over the vulnerable parts of the combine-harvester, tied them into position over the wheels, and turned to walk away.

He went two or three steps, and stopped, for straight ahead was a faint, narrow track through the waist-high barley. He did not recognise it as the track of any familiar animal. Rabbits, mice, rats, voles and foxes, left little sign of passing; cats left much more. Hares seldom came into such a field, and if there had been any recent incursion, he would have seen the tell-tale signs; he was as sure as a countryman could be that there had been none.

Then what, or who, had made these tracks?

There were three lines, thrown into relief by the slanting rays of the sun; all leading to the big oak where Betty would be waiting. He could see the top of it, a dark mass of foliage, about a quarter-of-a-mile away.

The most puzzling thing was not the tracks in themselves, but the fact that they had not been here half-an-hour ago. He himself had driven the combine-harvester past this very spot, and could not have missed such signs.

Nor did the fact that they started ten yards or so inside the uncut barley now escape him. There was a little stretch of grain through which he had walked, picking his way carefully; and the three tracks started, mysteriously, out of nowhere. He had intended to walk across the patch already cut, and then along the edge of the field, but now the tracks so interested and puzzled him that he was tempted to follow them. Comparatively little damage had as yet been done, but he was likely to cause more; that was the only reason for his hesitation.

He began to move forward.

Almost at the same moment that he did so, he heard behind him the harsh jangling of collapsing metal. He spun round. There, only a few yards away, the combine-harvester was lurching to one side, already the front wheels had sunk a foot or more into the solid ground. Utterly astounded, Dave Fordham stood and gaped.

There was nothing he could do to stop the fall. The machine, moving heavily, almost majestically, like a great ship slowly submerging, gradually settled down until the front was out of sight, and the back poked starkly into the air, the wheels still above ground.

Fordham's first thought was of a land subsidence. There had been accounts of one a few months before at the site of an old Roman burial ground near Salisbury. Uncharted burial grounds were suspected to be in the neighbourhood, but he knew of none here near Tidford. And he and his family had worked this field for thirty-odd years, and every kind of machine had been driven over it. Moreover, at one time it had been used for tank training; any underground earthworks or caves could hardly have remained undiscovered.

He began to move forward, his mind working fast but confusedly, still hardly able to believe the truth. The machine which he had covered up with such care was now standing drunkenly on ground which had sunk at least three feet. He paused momentarily before taking each step, for he was a powerful man, very heavy for his height, and if he trod on a weak spot, he might fall. The ground seemed firm enough, but he did not allow himself to be lured into a false sense of security.

The metal was still groaning, and a scattering of rooks, feasting on the ears left over by the harvester, rose high, cawing and croaking in their alarm. Gradually, they began to settle again.

Fordham heard other, different, noises nearby, like and unlike the sound of voices. Yet no one was in sight, and he could hear no one approaching. The voices, and shrill unspecified squeals, seemed to be coming from beneath him – or beneath the useless machine. Mystification at the damage, its effect on tomorrow's harvesting, and the utter obscurity of what had happened all tended to exasperate him. Some bloody young fools digging for bones! He would like to tan their hides.

He saw something move, close to the side of the nearest wheel. It was like a child, a minute child – or a dwarf. Certainly it looked human, although so small. It appeared only for a moment, then vanished. Fordham had not caught sight of its face, only the top of a head, and the curve of a tiny body. Like his wife, although for a very different reason, he wondered if this were an hallucination, and he was seeing things which were not there.

The squealing continued.

He thought automatically: I must help them. My God, there are a lot of kids under there! He forgot the risk of treading on hollow ground, felt his right foot break through the crust of stubble-covered earth, tried to save himself and failed. Arms waving, a strange dread tearing at his heart, he dropped downwards.

The fall was not far. When he came to rest, he was about waist deep in earth; he could stretch out his hands and touch stubble without effort. He must get out of here; the ground beneath him seemed firm enough. But the groaning and the squealing were louder, and before he made any attempt to move he realised that they were in fact coming from beneath the earth at its normal level.

He put his arms out to haul himself up, and almost at once the earth about him collapsed beneath his weight. As it crumbled the other sounds grew louder, shriller, more piercing. Chaff from the cut grain rose, half-blinding him, increasing the feeling of nightmare. Gradually, as the dust cleared away he was able to distinguish one thing from another.

It was as if he were looking out at the after-effects of a bomb; or an earthquake. Small pieces of brick and rubble, stones and earth, were piled in a heap in front of his eyes. Hands and feet, heads and arms, of dozens of tiny people appeared everywhere. Some of the creatures were clawing at the rubble to free themselves. Hands and cheeks were streaked with blood, fear,
terror,
showed on the miniature faces.

It must be a dream, Fordham thought wildly.

He felt like Gulliver in the world of Lilliput, but Gulliver had never set eyes on such a tragedy as this. The hideous thing was the number of people beneath the debris, although the collapsed area was really quite small – not much more than the size of one of his sheds.

I must go and get help, he thought.

I don't believe I'm seeing straight. I can't be.

Then he noticed two of the midget creatures staring at him, with a glare of malevolence.

He must get away and fetch help. All of the ground couldn't be hollow. He turned from the dreadful sight, and then said aloud: “I can dig ‘em out with my hands!”

The moment the thought entered his head, he began to work, and suddenly the tiny creatures seemed to realise what he was doing, and to stop struggling. He dug his hands into the rubble near one of them, eased it away, and lifted the creature out. His mind rejected the evidence of his eyes. It was like handling a doll, a beautifully made, beautifully formed doll, naked except for a loin cloth. The smooth, pale body was scratched here and there, but not seriously.

Fordham put it down very carefully on the earth at waist level.

“Take it easy,” he said. “You'll be all right.”

He moved to rescue another, and another; thinking stupidly: “They are men.” Certainly they were perfectly formed models of grown men, handsome in a way, although their size still made him think of them as dolls. He soon had twenty or so of them free, but worse was to come, for some were buried beneath the rubble. He groped for and found one, and when he brought it out, the dirt falling from it in streams, he saw that it was dead.

He placed it on the other side, away from the living creatures. Still unable to grasp what was happening, feeling as if it were a prolonged nightmare from which at any moment he would awake, he worked mechanically. There must be as many dead, now, as living creatures. He was tiring rapidly, yet could not stop, for there was no telling how many more there might be. He bent down yet again and then saw that some of those he had rescued were also helping. They carried miniature spades, picks and shovels.

The immediate relief was so great that he hardly realised the curious fact that – they had
tools.

They were digging a tunnel.

At first, he did not really understand why, but there was no point in trying to stop them. After a few minutes he realised there was a definite purpose in what they were doing. They were digging their way towards another chamber, working quickly but with great care.

Fordham bent down to look through the growing hole; and had a startling, overall view.

He saw rooms and passages; scrupulously laid out on the plan of a miniature house. In the rooms more of the tiny creatures were huddled. Some were male, but most female – not much more than a foot high, but with beautifully formed bodies, and long, rather wavy, hair. In one room were several such females and dozens of tinier creatures, no longer than his little finger. These were the children.

In so far as Fordham was able to think at all, he realised that this house, or apartment building, had been built from the hollowed out part of the ground, and the ground itself was the only roof. The walls of the room rose about two feet. They must have dug the cave out, then erected the wall partitions.

Those he had rescued now moved among the cowering females, apparently reassuring them, talking in low-pitched voices which had little volume or strength; attenuated as the voices from a radio in which the battery was running dry. The care lavished on their women was quite fantastic. So was the next step in this unbelievable colony. ‘Men' began to climb rope ladders which hung from the ceiling, and for the first time Fordham saw that the walls and the ceiling were reinforced by bracken, corn and barley stalks, leaves and twigs, like an enormous bird's nest. The fury of activity went on for a long time, until Fordham grew tired of watching, and ran his fingers through the debris, to make sure no more creatures were buried. Satisfied, he turned away, looking repeatedly over his shoulder almost in the hope that the scene would vanish. It did not. He reached the edge of the collapsed area, close to the combine-harvester. If he climbed on that, he should be able to step off the engine on to firm earth. He was now far enough from the ‘building' to be reasonably sure no further loosening of earth would occur.

He climbed on to the machine, his heart very heavy. He would have no chance, now, of getting the field harvested. One part of his mind, unable to accept the marvel of what he had seen, was turning to the disappointment of everyday life in a desperate clutch on sanity.

He stood poised on the engine, cursing and looking about him. From this height, he could see very little; just a hole like the mouth of a cave with a crust of earth on top. He pictured the bustle of activity, the checking, the care for the females and children.

“Women and children be damned!” muttered Fordham. “They're midgets!” He stepped forward. “Midgets! Don't make me laugh. They must be figments of the imagination. They can't really exist.”

But the sun was warm upon him, and the barley lay in its glory to the right and left. An aeroplane hummed high in the heavens and in the distance was the spreading oak tree. These things were real. He looked down at the earth, and saw at least twenty dead, miniature bodies.
They
were real, too. It was pointless to try to fool himself – he had to get to the car, to the Goose Inn, and the phone. No one would believe him, least of all Betty! Thought of the way she would look at him made him burst into a splutter of laughter. Betty's derisively curving lips and merry blue eyes – well, thank God she hadn't walked from the car, as she sometimes did. She could easily have broken a leg.

The ground now seemed firm enough, and he strode out more vigorously, tired, but eager to get help as quickly as possible. When he glanced behind him, he could see the half-buried combine-harvester, and the waving barley, but no other indication of his adventure at all. If he had not chanced to leave the machine at that spot, he might never have experienced it. A lot of poor little baskets would be alive, the colony – like a colony of humans – would be a bustle, all of the ‘people' happy and thriving.

“People.”

They couldn't be people, not in the accepted sense. What, or who, the hell were they?

He was near the five-barred gate, and the oak tree. At first he thought that Betty must have parked behind a thick hedge, but soon he realised that the car wasn't there. He was surprised. He would have expected her to come into the field, if he were late, not stay some distance off. If she'd been delayed he would have to walk to the Goose, and the prospect did not please him.

As he stepped through the gateway, he saw two rabbits.

They startled him because they were standing quite effortlessly on their hind legs. They
were
rabbits; and yet they had faces like the midget men of the field. He felt sure they were two of the colony, dressed up as rabbits in some ludicrous masquerade.

“What's going on?” he asked, and when there was no answer, he raised his voice. “What's it all about?”

As he moved forward, they leapt at him, so suddenly and with such speed that he could not even put up his arms to protect himself. He saw tiny hands thrust at him, and claws 
– talons – 
instead of finger-nails. On the same instant, his neck was punctured at least six times, inflicting an agonising, searing pain. He staggered, round and round in a drunken spin, until suddenly he lost all control, and fell.

As he lay dying, early lovers strolled along the narrow lanes nearby, tired labourers left the fields, birds swooped low in the warm sun to feed on the insects as they rose from leaf and twig and turf. In the thatched cottages, children played and mothers worked. Each window overlooked some peaceful English scene, offering respite for the night and promise for the morrow.