Quatermass and the UFOs.
Fight for the Dead.
Barnaby was the fitter of the two men, and he got to the three corpses quickly. When he did he issued a gutter curse that Quatermass had never heard a British army officer say in his life, but when the scientist reached him, he could see why.
The light was terrible and Quatermass couldn't see just how bad the identical injuries were, but as he looked down at the bodies he was left wondering to himself what kind of people would do such a thing.
The three bodies - two women and a man - had been cut open, their bodies splayed open. The rib cages had been cut open and the organs within had been taken. Hearts, and lungs, were gone, but in some cases, other organs had been removed along with other tissues. One of the women wasn't just missing her lungs and her heart, but her entire intestinal tract, her liver and her kidneys. She was even missing her skin, and there were bloodied pits where her eyes should have been.
As for the man…
Professor Bernard Quatermass had seen many strange things in his life. The strange Martian insects found in Hobb's lane would always rank high in his nightmares, but this was something he had never pictured.
The man was missing not only his internal organs, but it was as though a highly efficient and highly trained team of surgeons had slowly and methodically removed nearly every single ligament and part of the musculature as they could get.
Quatermass held the light up as he examined the bodies, and he saw one of the women had been virtually skinned, as had the man, and she was missing some of her muscle tissue as well.
"Good lord. Quatermass…," Barnaby wasn't able to finish.
Quatermass nodded. He was just as horrified. "I know, believe me, I do."
"This must be the work of an insane maniac," Barnaby tried to reason.
But Quatermass had noted something about the work. There was a meticulousness behind the entire act that wasn't just done by somebody with a knife or an axe. "There's no blood on the ground," he noted. "At least, not a sizeable pool of blood from all three victims," he added.
"No, you're right," Barnaby nodded, deciding to focus on other matters instead of something grisly before he looked around the village and then checked his watch. It was late, he noted, but not that late. "Have you also noticed that there isn't anyone in sight?"
Quatermass stood upright and turned in a circle. He couldn't see anyone. "No, you're right."
Barnaby had seen enough to make him extremely worried. He took his radio and sent an urgent message to his second in command, telling him to get here quickly, and to call the police and the ambulance. And he told them why and that he and Professor Quatermass were going to investigate.
"It won't take them long to get here," Quatermass observed. "But why did you send for the police? Surely you don't imagine this was done by a psychopathic maniac?"
"Who else is it likely to be? In any case, we don't investigate murders, and that's how I see it. Now come on, we need to check the rest of the village. I want to know how everyone is, and why nobody is out here," Barnaby said.
Quatermass sighed, and he realised Barnaby had a good point. The two men walked towards the nearby pub, but as they approached they were both chilled by how quiet the place was. Usually, a pub was a noisy place, but there was nothing, not even the sound of murmurs. And the lights were on.
Cautiously, Barnaby tested the door and saw that it was still unlocked. Sharing a cautious look with Quatermass, the officer drew out his weapon and they stepped inside, stopping in the doorway when they saw the scene inside.
Everyone in the pub was dead, their bodies splayed open like the three unfortunate victims outside; like the people outside, the bodies in the pub were missing all of their bodily organs although some still had others. But horrifyingly there were seven people being held up by their ankles with transparent tubes linked to pumps, draining their bodies of blood and it was all being pumped into large barrels. It was like a scene in a slaughterhouse or abattoir, using humans instead of animals.
"My god," Barnaby whispered.
"This is beginning to look less and less like a homicidal maniac's work to me," Quatermass commented as he tried to avert his eyes from the gruesome remains, and focused on the pumps and the barrel. Through a patch of plastic on the top, Quatermass could see the barrel was very nearly full of blood, and other body fluids. "Most serial killers do not drain blood like this and use such sophisticated equipment. Somebody's collecting all of the organs and the blood of these people. That means they're nearby."
"I've called for my men. They'll be here shortly," Barnaby took comfort in that. "Do you recognise the equipment?"
Quatermass had a very chilling thought.
"No," Quatermass answered the question while he gave his thought time to be processed in his mind. "Some of it looks like pumps, but I don't recognise the materials." Quatermass had given his brain time to process the thoughts he had and he felt now was the best time to reply. "And I hope that you're right about your men arriving soon, or we've given someone or somebodies fresh bodies to mutilate," Quatermass said, making Barnaby look up, his expression horrified before it hardened. Within a second he was back on the radio, telling his men to come in and proceed with caution, citing the murderers might still be around.
Once that was taken care of, the two men examined the bodies as best as they could. They explored the pub, but they found in every room somebody was killed. But when they opened a door to a cleaning cupboard, they found a woman crouched into an uncomfortable pile on the ground. She hadn't been mutilated.
Barnaby and Quatermass got her out, and the scientist examined her. "She's alive. I think she's been gassed," he said in surprise, seeing she had the classic signs of a gas attack; he wasn't an expert, but the signs were clear to him.
"Gas?"
"Yes. The signs are clear to me; she'll need to be sent to a hospital to recover, but for now, we need to keep her safe. And I don't know what kind of gas was used, but it was a powerful one; pumped into every house and through the air so it knocked everyone out."
"Only for them to be killed," Barnaby's voice was low and angry. "Do you think there's still gas around?"
"I don't think so. I'm not feeling any kind of effect you'd get from gas."
"Do you think it's toxic?"
"No, again it's hard to be sure. I think it's some kind of sleeping gas, but because I don't know what kind of effect it has in the long term, I can't really be sure. When your men arrive, you should tell them to be cautious of more gas attacks," Quatermass suddenly looked worried.
Barnaby heard it too.
Footsteps outside.
Booted feet, but they seemed too casual, too quick to be the march of soldiers. Barnaby realised that really quickly. "That can't be my men, not this quickly," he commented, looking thoughtful and concerned. "And they have transport; I didn't hear an engine, did you, Professor?"
"No, I didn't," Quatermass replied, holding his hand up for silence so he could listen in on the sounds. "They're coming from outside."
After making sure the woman was left safe, the two men went to a window and peered out subtly as much as they could. The window showed the village square. For a moment they didn't see anything aside from the cars and other houses, but then they saw several red-suited silver helmeted figures outside.
"Who are they?" Barnaby asked. "Some kind of fancy dress costume?"
"With six of them dressed exactly the same?" Quatermass asked rhetorically. "No, those suits are too elaborate." Thoughtfully he rubbed his moustache. "They remind me of the spacesuits the astronauts at the Rocket Group use…"
But Barnaby didn't hear him. He had just spotted something more horrific, two more of the figures leaning over a lone body and methodically stripping it open on the spot. The soldier had seen many horrific sights in his career, but when he spotted the organs being removed, he threw both caution and stealth out of the window, and he whipped out his gun and smashed it through the window. And he opened fire. The figures were taken by surprise by the unexpected attack; there was the sound of breaking glass in the distance, and Quatermass saw one of the figures grab its helmeted head desperately.
Barnaby might have been a relatively mild-mannered man for a soldier, but he was also a crack shot honed by years of experience, and Quatermass saw three more figures drop to the ground before the scientist even had a chance to stop Barnaby in the first place.
The red-suited figures pointed some kind of gun in their direction, and they opened fire. Barnaby reacted instantly, he ducked down pulling Quatermass down with him.
"Listen to those gunshots," Barnaby snapped.
Quatermass paused and listened. "They don't sound like conventional guns."
"No, they don't," Barnaby agreed, but then a smile lit up his face. For a moment Quatermass wondered what was making him smile like that, but then he heard the sound of heavy engines thundering closer. "My men are here. We'll soon round 'em up."
"Don't be too sure," Quatermass warned, "we don't know what they're capable of."
"I know," Barnaby replied. "Come on, Professor, we need to join my men," Barnaby said, lightly knocking his hand on Quatermass's shoulder as they both left the room.
X
The soldiers had come as quickly as they could, and they had heard the sound of gunfire before they'd arrived in the small village and they had prepared for a fight. The moment they arrived, they quickly took stock of the corpses and the weird-suited figures with weapons. The soldiers immediately fell into their training, and they opened fire with rifles and machine guns. The figures tried to defend themselves, but they were so few and they quickly fell to the fire of the soldiers.
Taking advantage of his men's arrival, Barnaby left the pub with Quatermass, and they joined Barnaby's sergeant. "Sir!" The sergeant saluted.
Barnaby nodded. "We found these chaps removing organs and there's a pump of some kind drawing blood and other fluids. I want them stopped."
The sergeant's expression became grimmer. "Understood sir. I've got the others going through the village now with orders to shoot on sight."
Quatermass bit his tongue. This was one of the many issues he had with military men; while he knew such action was sometimes necessary for the greater good, especially in this case, he wished he could speak to these people and try to talk some sense into them. But now he was here, he doubted he could just sneak off. "Do you know if they've shown any signs of wanting to surrender because of how many soldiers there are?" Quatermass asked.
"No, sir," the sergeant replied.
Barnaby turned to Quatermass shrewdly. "Do you think they'd be willing to talk?" He asked, wondering if such a possibility was open to them.
Quatermass winced when the heavier sound of the strange guns the figures were using sounded in the air. "Probably not," he rethought his opinion. "I just wanted to be sure of all possibilities."
"Looks like they're not interested," Barnaby replied. Suddenly he stopped. "What's that noise?" He asked.
A strange humming sound was becoming louder and louder with every second; Quatermass frowned as he listened to it more closely, and he mentally tried to identify it, but he couldn't. All of his theories were quickly shot before they even properly materialised in his mind. "I don't know," he frowned, not liking that answer. "I really don't."
"Sarge," A soldier creeping towards them, suddenly rushed to meet the sergeant, Barnaby and Quatermass. "Sirs!" The private crashed to attention before he urgently gave his report. "They're retreating, all of them."
"Retreating?" Barnaby repeated. "Where to? Where are they going?"
"They're covering their retreat, giving some of their mates time to collect small boxes and barrels and wheeling them to the back of the village," the private said.
"Why would they go there?" Barnaby said, glancing at Quatermass curiously before turning to his sergeant. "Did you direct the men to cover the entire village?"
"I did, sir," the sergeant was just as confused as his superior officer.
"There's no point standing here and speculating; we need to find out what they're doing here, and thinking about it, these people's being here in this village so soon after the failure of the moon probe. Remember, the second contact?" Quatermass said.
"You think these people might have had something to do with it?"
"I honestly don't know," Quatermass confessed. "But I want to know why the moon probe failed to like that."
Barnaby and the sergeant led the men to the back of the village, directing orders to the others as quickly as they could and they followed some of the figures who were covering their retreat with their own firepower. Two of Barnaby's men fell, although if they were wounded or dead, Quatermass didn't know as he was pushed forward. The figures led them to the back of the village, to a small field where a small silver saucer lay on the ground, with a transparent dome covering a central section on top, which glowed a gentle green on top. Quatermass came to a stop in astonishment, his eyes refusing to believe what he was seeing.
"They exist," he whispered. "My God, they actually exist!"
Quatermass was so stunned that he had to be shoved hard to the ground by someone, he wasn't sure whom, he was too busy watching the saucer as it fired bolts of energy that blew houses apart before it began rising into the air and then sped off out of the range of Barnaby's men, who were firing at it with everything they had.
When the soldiers escorted the rocket scientist and their commanding officer away, with the bodies and whatever pieces of equipment they found during a brief search of the village, Quatermass barely noticed. He was too lost in his own world. But whenever Barnaby leaned forward to ask him what was wrong, Quatermass would always reply, "My God, they actually exist."