‘Get some gloves and lend a hand, will you?’
She recognised the woman from the Garden Centre, her thin, harassed face now streaked with blood. Probably she’d had those gardening gloves with her when she’d set up the potted plants stall. Leaning over one of the girl casualties, she plucked the caterpillars off her — two which were already eating into her leg — and killed them.
‘Here, get her over to the First Aid tent,’ she instructed crisply. ‘Make yourself useful.’
Ginny picked her up, staggering under her weight though the girl could be no more than twelve years of age, and carried her back to the St John’s Ambulance tent, only to find it in a shambles with one of the uniformed men dead and another moaning on the ground among the spilled equipment. She went on to the marquee.
Laying the girl carefully on one of the tables and leaving it to the tea servers to try and staunch the bleeding, she dashed through the back of the marquee to the washing-up area to find some household gloves. She was in luck, spotting two or three new pairs in a helper’s shopping bag.
She pulled a pair of them on, then sprinted back to the field praying they’d be strong enough to deter the caterpillars. On the way she passed the local policeman grimly carrying an injured woman over his shoulder, his shirt drenched with sweat and blood.
‘In the marquee!’ she yelled at him. ‘We’re putting them in the marquee!’
How many they managed to rescue between them she’d no idea. The work seemed endless, the sun burned fiercely in a pure white sky and for every caterpillar they killed, more appeared from nowhere. At one point, pausing to snatch in some deep breaths, she counted five or six helpers, not including the constable; but the numbers varied. Ginny herself concentrated on the children, even those on the point of death; she knew she’d never be able to carry anyone heavier.
Then she spotted Mrs Martinson lying spreadeagled across a heap of bodies, but still alive. Her face looked almost angelically young. Ginny lifted her bleeding arm, searching for the caterpillars.
‘Don’t waste your time there!’ the Garden Centre person snapped, just behind her. ‘She’s half-way through the pearly gates already — can’t you see? Stick to those we can save. That’s all we can hope to do.’
But how many were there yet, she thought desperately. Over by the lucky dip lay the vicar, his face distorted into a hideous death mask, his throat torn open. Why did they so often go for the throat, as though they knew that was where humans were vulnerable? Then, a few yards away, she heard the terrible trumpeting voice of a man caught in the very extremes of pain and fear. Reaching him, she almost fainted with shock at what she saw.
The constable lay on his back, his body twisting as though in a fit, caterpillars probing every part of him. Over the groin the blue serge of his uniform trousers was soaked in blood. Two caterpillars had eaten their way through it — from the inside, she realised sickeningly. But they were everywhere: around his ankles, poking under his rolled-up sleeves, chewing through his sweated armpits, investigating his eyes… his ears…
Again he roared out his agony, his whole body shaking, but there was nothing she could do to help him.
A knife?
Perhaps there’d been a knife on one of those stalls. At least she could put him out of his misery… spare him some of the pain…
The end came of its own accord, worse than anything she’d yet witnessed. One last roar shook him, but the voice died within seconds to become a deep-throated rattle which went on and on, chilling her ice-cold to hear it. When at last it ceased, trickles of blood appeared at the corners of his mouth, as well as from his dead eyes and nostrils.
From overhead came the sound of a helicopter, first circling, then hovering before slowly coming down to land in the neighbouring field. She stood by the policeman’s body watching it, unable even to think of what still had to be done. If only, she felt, she could allow herself to collapse into some rescuer’s strong grip. Let someone else take it all over.
A caterpillar began lazily to investigate her boot.
‘Urgh!’
In alarm she managed to step back, then scraped it off against her other foot and ground it till it burst. Another approached her from the side. And a third. As though they could sense her exhaustion and were marking her out as their next victim. She wanted to cry out, but her words died in her throat. She could hear the woman from the Garden Centre calling something, but didn’t know what.
She was next, she could swear to it.
Again she stepped back, almost stumbling and falling over a teenage girl’s mangled body. Was it imagination, or did those caterpillars actually stop eating to raise their heads and gaze darkly at her with their nasty little eyes? Was it fear — or were they really moving closer to her from every side?
Her chest tightened. The saliva in her mouth dried, tasting of dust. She wanted to scream. Oh God, she needed help more than these other people, didn’t she? Wasn’t she still alive? With everything still ahead of her?
Send someone to help me, PLEASE!
That whimpering sound puzzled her. Not her own voice, she could swear to it, but nearby. The fear suddenly snapped within her, leaving her cold and rational. It was a child she could hear, somewhere among the remains of a smashed-up stall.
In two steps she was there, defying the threat around her. Scorning it.
She tugged the fallen trestle-board aside to reveal a small boy of about four lying curled up, his thumb in his mouth. Miraculously, the caterpillars had ignored him. Hastily she checked his limbs: not a scratch or a bite anywhere. His mother — wherever she was now — had obviously dressed him up in his best for the All Saints Spring Fête, Ginny noticed with bitterness in her heart.
His big eyes regarded her wonderingly as she swung him to her shoulder and began to pick her way across the field, heading for the marquee.
Two men from the helicopter, masked and in boiler suits, with canisters secured to their backs, were spraying the vegetation along the approach to the marquee. To allow her to pass, one turned off his spray for a couple of seconds. She was uncomfortably aware of his eyes staring at her through the goggles.
It vaguely surprised her to discover how quickly some sort of order was being re-established. A fat, motherly woman took the little boy off her and carried him away between the trestle tables on which the injured were lying. They seemed strangely silent, she thought. A few groans here and there; a man sobbing; heavy, desperate breathing from an old woman fighting for air: but for the most part they lay there inertly, as if already dead.
Bernie, his shirt sleeves rolled up, a syringe in his hand, glanced up and saw her. ‘Ginny!’ he called across. ‘Thank God you’re all right!’