Read Online Famine by John Creasey - Free Book Online Page B

“She lives too much in the future she thinks should be the present.”
    â€œAnd I don’t live vividly enough in the world you’re trying to improve. Sap – you can’t go on alone. You really can’t. You need companionship of a kind you simply haven’t got. Music, books, the arts, they’re not enough. They’re really not enough.”
    She meant what she said deeply, and in one way he agreed with her. He wished he felt differently towards her, but knew he was never likely to. She was still smiling in that impersonal, half-sardonic way, and he had no doubt that there was much on her mind she had not said. She was so good, so right, so determined.
    â€œI get by,” he said.
    Joyce took a step forward, surprising him by her intensity: “Sap, you don’t get by! Every day takes a little more out of you. You’re drawing on your reserves far too often. I’ve known you take a situation like this in your stride but you haven’t taken this one in your stride, have you?”
    How right she was!
    â€œYou need someone to relax with, you need—” Joyce broke off. “Oh, I don’t mean you need sex ! Sap—” She came towards him, hands outstretched, no sign of the sardonic twist to her lips now. “Sap, you’re starved of affection. You’re the most affectionate man I’ve ever known, and you’ve never really had it since your wife died, have you?”
    It was impossible even after six years to think of Drusilla, his wife, without hurt.
    â€œNo,” he admitted, “but you’re wrong, Joyce. I can get along very well with my music and my books and my friends.”
    But when she had gone, he knew that he was lying to her and to himself, and she had forced him to think of Drusilla, whom he had loved so much, who had truly been part of him. He was restless again, disgruntled, even a little resentful that Joyce had done this to him, although he knew that was unfair. He sat back, losing himself in a piano concerto by Liszt … and did not realise he had dozed.
    He heard his name called, and felt a hand on his shoulder. “Sap.”
    His eyes opened instantly. Joyce was standing in front of him, obviously alarmed. Sleep fell away, and his voice was crisp and sharp.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œMr. Campson is here.”
    Campson. The pathologist.
    â€œBut I understood he was at Salisbury.”
    â€œHe wanted to see you in person.”
    â€œRight,” said Palfrey. “Where is he?”
    â€œIn my office.”
    â€œBring him in,” Palfrey said.
    She hesitated.
    â€œWhat is it?” he demanded. “What else is there?”
    â€œWe’ve had the reports from villages around Salisbury,” Joyce told him. “At least a dozen shops and warehouses have been broken into, and cereals stolen. Other food has gone, too, particularly sugar and chocolate. And—”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œThree people have seen the rabbit men.”
    â€œNot the midgets?” He thought of the tiny, hairless creatures.
    â€œNo. Rabbit men,” she insisted, and panic was not far away from her.
    Palfrey stood up, very slowly.
    â€œThree you say? Right.” He hesitated, almost afraid to go on, but forced himself to ask: “Any more attacks?”
    â€œNo. Not yet.”
    â€œIs there anything I’ve overlooked?”
    â€œI don’t think so,” Joyce replied. “The military and the police had been alerted, all storage places for staple foods are being checked – if any of the ‘rabbit’ men or the midgets are seen, we’ll be told. There’s no trace of the smokescreen, and surprisingly little trace of the passage of the colony over the countryside. We can’t really do anything more until we’ve located another colony, can we?”
    â€œOr the Salisbury colony,” Palfrey remarked. “We want to examine the area over which