It wasn't Rothwell. He knew that when he glimpsed red, moving just inside the fog. It was the follower of the claw, the man who had had it made and been possessed by it, waiting to be fed – waiting for Alan to be forced to pass on the claw. It knew he would have to. Alan felt despair, colder than the fog that was forming a crust on the pipe, and then he had a last desperate idea. 'What's that?' he said, pointing toward the snuffling. 'A dog, is it? Chewing your tyres.'
The driver listened to the snuffling, then he went grimly toward the front of the tanker. 'Don't go away,' he warned Alan.
Nothing was further from Alan's mind. As soon as the driver was out of sight he grabbed the pipe to unscrew the connection. It was more difficult than he'd hoped; ice had sealed it to the tanker. He wrenched desperately at it and heard the ice crack. He spun the heavy ring, spun it again when the pipe didn't budge, wrenched again at the pipe. This time it came free, and he leapt back barely in time as it spilled liquid nitrogen over the gravel.
He had no time to waste. He pulled out the claw and slipped it into the belly of the tanker, into a bath of liquid nitrogen that must already be several feet deep. He hefted the pipe, which felt capable of gluing his hands to itself with ice, and shoved the end into the aperture in the side of the tanker, had to adjust it before he could spin the ring and seal the connection. Then he stepped back and turned to face what he'd heard.
He'd heard the driver cry out and fall. Now he heard a scrabbling of gravel. It wasn't until the driver called 'Mr Rothwell, are you there? Can you come here for a minute?' in a strange pale voice that Alan realized he was struggling to his feet. It must have been shock that had made him lose his balance. Alan could guess what he'd seen even before it came out of the fog, toward him.
It looked starved and desperate. Its scrawny naked body glittered with dried blood and ice. Its face looked hardly human now, if indeed it ever had. As it clawed at the tanker and the pipe it looked feeble but determined. Perhaps it couldn't deal with the connection because it was nearly all animal now. It tried a last time to reach the claw its nails screeching on the side of the tanker, then it turned on Alan.
Its bare feet had stuck to the spilled nitrogen. It lurched at him, tearing itself loose, leaving skin and flesh behind on the gravel. If it could do that in its desperation, what might it do to him in an attempt to make him retrieve the claw? All the same, he stood his ground. Whatever the follower might do to him, the claw was safely out of reach.
He wouldn't have been able to hear the intense cold inside the tanker break the claw, but he saw when it happened. He saw the naked figure jerk to a halt a few feet away from him, jerk and contort like metal under intolerable stress. All at once the crust of blood broke open in a multitude of places, and then the scrawny flesh did as its own thin blood boiled out. The figure collapsed as if age and death and its aftermath had seized it all at once, yet for an instant Alan thought he saw a kind of relief, almost gratitude, in its eyes.
He moved away from the stain on the gravel as Roth well and the driver ran up. 'What was it?' they demanded. 'Did you see?'
'Whatever it was, it's gone now,' Alan said, and didn't care that they stared at his audible relief. They glared about then, not quite believing him. 'I'll come back another time,' he told Rothwell, who was hardly listening.
He knew he never would come back. The fog felt clean on his skin as he headed for Reception to call a taxi to take him to the hospital. He was himself now, and he knew Liz must be herself again. The influence was destroyed for ever. The sooner he was at the hospital, the sooner they could guide Anna back to trusting them. Sunlight began to break through the fog, and it felt like a blaze of hope.