by Mark Morris
An instant later that pain was superseded by the greater pain of the cleaver blade slicing into his flesh. It was only a glancing blow, but it cut through several layers of clothing into the fleshy part of his arum beneath his left bicep. Even as he was twisting away, the blade passed through his flesh and whacked across the side of his ribs like a club. Steve staggered backwards into the sitting room, aware of a wet burning sensation in his left arnz. He tried desperately to stay on his feet, but his legs somehow became tangled up with one another and he fell backwards, his view of the man suddenly replaced by a swooping flash of water-stained ceiling. His fall was partly broken by an armchair, which skidded backwards, propelled by his nmonmentum. For one awful second Steve was sprawling and helpless on the ground. He raised his head in time to see the man swinging the cleaver back over his shoulder for a second blow.
Reacting out of sheer terror, Steve drew back his right leg and pistoned it forward in a clumsy kung fu kick, the bottom of his boot connecting with the man's left thigh. The man gasped, his upper body jerking forward, the arc of his swing interrupted. For a moment it seemed his legs would buckle, but then he straightened stiffly, his teeth clenched in pain. Steve scrambled back a few more feet, and as the man raised the cleaver again he shifted his weight from his right elbow to his back, pointed the Glock at the man, and pulled the trigger.
The sound of gunfire was obscenely loud in the small, carpetless room. Even more obscene was the way the right side of the man's head suddenly exploded backwards in a spray of red meat. The man didn't fold gracefully like in the movies; he went down like a sack of cement. For several seconds after pulling the trigger, Steve could only lie there, shaking and weak as though with fever, watching as the pulverized remains of the man's head slid slowly down the wall.
A sudden stifled cry from upstairs got him moving again. He scrambled to his feet, instinctively putting his left hand down to the floor to push himself up. Though the hand was numb, the upper part of his arm felt like it was on fire, and he screamed in pain. He looked down and saw that his left side was soaked in blood. He felt sick and dizzy,but he had to move. Had to. Suddenly the front door of the famnhouse crashed open behind him and Steve spun round, pointing his gun.
"Don't shoot!" yelled Sue. "It's me!"
Steve lowered the gun. Sue's gaze swept around the room. "Fuck," she said.
"He attacked me," Steve mumbled. "I had to shoot him....
"I know. Where are the girls?"
"Upstairs, I think."
Without another word, Sue ran for the stairs, gun raised high. Steve went after her, leaden-footed, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it. The upper floor smelled of mold and damp, though there had obviously been a concerted effort to clean the place up. There were four doors on this landing, all closed. Instead of sneaking about, trying each in turn as Steve would have done, Sue took up a position against the banister where she could cover all four.
"If there's anyone here, come out with your hands up," she shouted. "There are two of us and we're armed. We don't want to hurt anyone, but if you show any aggression towards us, we won't hesitate to shoot. We only want our friends back-then we'll go."
There was no response. Sue glanced at Steve. "You okay?"
He wasn't, but he nodded. "Fine."
"I'm going in," she said. "You stay here, cover the other doors. Don't come after me unless I call you or you hear shooting."
"Okay."
Sue edged up to the nearest door and put her ear to it. Hearing nothing, she took a couple steps back and booted it open. She was inside, gun sweeping in an arc, even before the door had fully swung inwards. Within seconds she was out. "Bathroom," she said. "Major shithole."
It was the same procedure with the second door. As soon as she entered this room, however, she yelled, "Get away from her!Let the girl go and lie on the floor! Do it! Now!"
Despite what she had said, Steve ran into the room. There was a bed to the right of the door, and a young man was sitting on it almost casually, Abby kneeling on the floor between his legs with her back to him. He had one hand over her mouth and the other resting lightly on her shoulder. His legs were wrapped around her arms, rendering her immobile.
"Now, I said!" Sue screamed, but the man ignored her.
"Let my fucking daughter go," Steve barked, his voice dredged from the smoky depths of his lungs.
The young man looked at him, not defiantly, but almost quizzically.
Steve pointed his gun at the man's head. "Let her go or I'll kill you like I killed the man downstairs."
The young man sighed and raised both hands. Abby struggled free from the constraints of his legs and slumped forward. Beneath the screen of her dirty blond hair she began to gag. Concerned, Steve took a step towards her, but Sue stuck out an arm.
Steve watched as Abby raised a trembling hand and pulled something from her mouth. It wasn't until she dropped it on the floor that he realized it was a sock. He looked at the man and noticed that one of his feet were bare.
"You fucking animal," he muttered.
The young man rolled his eyes. "Oh, grow up," he said mildly.
"I told you to lie down," Sue said.
The man regarded her with an unsettling calmness. "Where do you want me? Bed or floor?"
"On the floor, on your front," Sue said.
The young man took his time in satisfying her request. When he was prone, Steve hurried forward and dropped to his knees beside Abby.
"Hey," he said softly.
She let out a sound like a soft sob and clung to him so tightly that his bruised ribs flared with a pain he tried not to show.
"Are you okay?" he gasped.
She nodded against his chest. "I knew you'd come," she whispered.
"None of them... did anything to you, did they?"
She shook her head. "No. Not like you mean. He was going to though. He said I had to have babies. He said it was... my duty."
Steve glared at the young man. "You sick little fuck," he snarled.
The young man raised his head to look at hinm. There was disdain on his face.
"You really don't live in the real world, do you?" he said. "You have no inkling of what's required to survive. For your own good I'nm going to tell you a few home truths. Number one, women have to have babies. If we're going to survive as a species and claw our way back to anything like a reasonable way of life, then we need to repopulate this planet, starting now. If we fall back on social niceties, on redundant concepts of what's civilized and moral, we'll die out within a generation or two. Number two, animals are extinct, which means the only meat we've got now is each other. It's not nice, it's not civilized, but it's fact. Law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest. Accept it or perish."
Steve shook his head. "You are sick."
"No, mate," the young man said, "I'm realistic. You, on the other hand, are living in cloud cuckoo land." He laughed suddenly. "Why don't you ask your mate there? She knows I'm talking sense. I can see it in her eyes."
Steve looked at Sue, who glanced away guiltily. "All I want is to find Libby and go," she said. She jabbed the young man in the side with her foot. "Where is she?"
"Two doors along," the man said, "but it's a pity you have to leave. By pooling our resources we might have had a nice little community going here. You might have stood a chance."
"We'll take our chances without you, thanks," Steve said. He helped Abby to her feet.
For the first time she noticed the blood coating his side. "God, Dad, what happened to you?"
"I'll be fine," he said. "Let's go and get Libby."
Together they moved towards the door. Sue lingered a moment. "Don't you move," she said to the young man. "Don't you come after us."
"You sure you don't want to stay?" he asked.
Sue bent over him, her voice low. "I'd rather die than live the kind of life you're proposing."
"Then that's exactly what you'll do," he said.
She shuddered and left the roo
m, slamming the door behind her. Steve and Abby were already outside the room at the end of the corridor, where the man had told them Libby was.
"Libby," Steve said, "are you in there? Answer me if you are."
He turned at Sue's approach. "There's no answer. The door's locked though." He indicated the key.
"It might be a trap," Sue said.
"That's what I was thinking."
"All right, flatten yourselves against the wall there. Steve, give me your gun and take mine."
"What are you going to do?" asked Abby.
"I'm going to be careful."
They did as she asked. As quietly as she could, Sue unlocked the door. She carefully reached out, twisted the door knob, then shoved the door open, squeezing herself back against the frame as it swung inwards. There was no sound, no movement from inside the room. They couldn't see much from their position just part of the floor, the right angle where two walls n et, the edge of a window. Sue lowered herself onto her stomach and crawled forward. As soon as she was round the edge of the open door, she pointed her gun into the part of the room they couldn't see from outside.
It seemed to take an age before she said softly, "It's okay, you can come in." She was rising to her feet as Steve and Abby moved forward to join her. At first glance Steve thought the room-bare of everything but a double bed-was empty. Sue glanced at him, pointed at the bed and mouthed, "Under there."
Steve moved forward, but Sue again raised a hand. "I'll deal with it," she said, and passed him her gun.
She walked up to the bed, then knelt down and peered underneath. "Hey, Libby," she said in a softer voice than Steve thought her capable of. "It's Sue. I've got Steve and Abby with me, and Max is outside. We've come to take you home."
Steve thought of the water-damaged hotel, stinking of corpses, where they had spent the night. He wouldn't have called it "home," but in this brave new world of theirs, he guessed home was wherever your friends and family were.
There was a whimper from beneath the bed, and then Libby's tearful voice asked, "Where are the men?"
"They're not going to hurt you," Sue said. "You're safe with us now."
Libby crawled from beneath the bed and shakily climbed to her feet. Like Abby, she was filthy and her face was streaked with tears. She looked at Abby, wide-eyed and haunted. "Did they... hurt you?" she asked.
Abby shook her head.
"Thank God," she whispered. "Thank God." Then she slumped and Sue grabbed her to stop her from falling.
Steve dreaded asking the question, but at the same time couldn't help himself. "What did they do to you, Libby?"
The expression on her face was answer enough.
They left the house, Steve and Sue deliberately positioning their bodies so that the girls wouldn't see the dead man in the room downstairs. Max was still standing over the three men lying in the mud outside the burning barn. The fire had really taken hold now, and looked as though it might spread if it wasn't dealt with quickly. The barn was a blackening shell, collapsing in on itself as the inferno raged. Max turned his sweating face towards them and his relief was plain to see. When they got close enough to hear him over the roaring flames, he nodded down at the man with the shoulder wound and shouted, "He don't look good."
Sue examined the man quickly. "He's unconscious," she said. "He's not dead."
"He's losing a lot of blood."
"That's his problem," she said brusquely. She stood up and strode forward to address the three men lying in the mud. "I hope you've learned your lesson. We didn't come here looking for trouble. We only came to get our people back. Because of what you did, you've lost your supplies and one of your people is dead." She nodded at the unconscious man. "And he might die too if you don't do something about it. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we don't like the way you live your lives. But that's up to you. It's got nothing to do with us. All I want to say before we go is don't come looking for revenge. Because we're the ones with the guns and if we see you again, we won't ask questions. Is that understood?" None of the men said anything.
"I said is that understood?"
"Yeah, yeah," snarled the American man. "Now get out of here."
Sue stared at the men for a moment, contempt on her face. "I sincerely hope we never meet again," she muttered.
"How's your arm?" Libby said.
Steve looked up. He had been so preoccupied with his own thoughts, and with the sheer hard work of putting one foot in front of the other when all he wanted to do was stop to ease the grinding pain in his side, that he hadn't realized she had fallen into step beside him. The farmhouse was over half an hour's walk behind them, and up to now the long plod back to the hotel had been undertaken mostly in silence.
"Not too bad," he lied. "The paracetomol that Sue gave me has helped a bit."
"You don't look good," Libby said.
"Oh, thanks," he said. "I always thought I had a certain rakish charm."
She almost smiled at that. "You look pale, feverish."
"I'm not feeling brilliant," he admitted, "but neither is anyone else. Nice cup of tea and a lie down, that's what I need. It's been a long day"
"Tell me about it," she mumbled.
Lowering his voice so that only she could hear, he asked, "How are you, Libby? Really?"
"I'll survive," she said, so quietly he could barely hear.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." Her answer was abrupt. She gave him a sidelong look. "Sorry, Steve, but no. I'm not ready"
Daylight was draining from the sky when the hotel finally came into view. By now Steve's limbs were prickly and tender, as if hot glass were pulsing through his veins, and though he hadn't said anything, he didn't think he could have gone on much longer. He hoped the blade hadn't been rusty or dirty. The thought of getting a blood infection was pretty frightening.
All seemed quiet as they arrived, squelching and muddy, on the forecourt of the hotel.
"Wonder how Greg is," Max said.
"I expect Marco's been making him mugs of cocoa and reading him bedtime stories," said Sue.
There were a few halfhearted grunts of amusement, but no one was really in the mood to laugh.
They entered the hotel, each of them covering their noses and mouths. "I'd forgotten how fragrant this place is," Sue said.
Trying to ignore the rotting bodies in the foyer, they went upstairs. The third floor was so quiet it might have been deserted.
"Hi, honey, I'm home!" called Sue.
There was no response.
"Please, no more shit today," murmured Max, taking a firm grip on his rifle.
"Anyone around?" called Sue. "Marco? Mabel?"
Silence. Sue was about to say something when Abby held up a hand. "Shh."
"What is it?" asked Max.
"I can hear something. Listen. A kind of... fizzing noise."
After a few seconds Max nodded. "Yeah, I hear it too. It's like them things Ma used to take for her stomach."
"Alka-Seltzer," said Steve, and almost unconsciously murmured the slogan from the TV commercial: "Plink, plink, fizz."
"It's coming from the end room, isn't it?" said Libby.
"Greg's room," confirmed Sue. "Max, with me?" He nod ded. She looked over her shoulder at Steve. "Are you up to this, Steve? You look terrible."
"I'm fine," he lied, and held up his gun.
"Nice and slow," Sue said. "It might be nothing."
They approached the room-Sue, then Max, then Steve, bringing up the rear.
The door was very slightly ajar. "What is that noise?" whispered Sue.
"Radio static?" suggested Steve.
"I'll push the door open and we'll enter quickly in single file, okay?"
They nodded.
She held up three fingers. "Three, two, one." Then she pushed the door open, entered and pointed her gun at the bed.
Steve couldn't ever have imagined that he would see any- thing worse than what he had already witnessed that day. However
, the sight that met his eyes when he stepped into the third-floor hotel room was so horrific, and so unbelievable, that it felt as if all the blood left in his body were draining into his boots. He heard a thump as his gun slipped from his nerveless fingers and hit the floor, and the room began to sway around him.
Beside Greg's now empty bed, Mabel-dear, sweet, brave Mabel-was being... t h e only word that came to Steve's mind was absorbed. Her tongue, horribly swollen and purple, was lolling from her open mouth; her eyes, glaring from their sockets, were red with ruptured blood vessels. Her body was folded almost in two, so that the tips of her toes were almost touching her chin. Her dangling arms flopped and twitched like those of a marionette. It was as if she were being sucked into an industrial mangle, as if the back of her jacket had become snagged in its metal rollers and she were being pulled inexorably in. But this was no machine that was killing her. This was... what?Some kind of animal?Above the rhythmic and almost gentle fizzing sound it made, Steve could hear Mabel's bones cracking, could see her flesh splitting open. Could see blood and other... stuff spattering the carpet beneath her, forming an ever-widening pool.
The creature itself. The thing. Though Steve was staring right at it, it almost defied the eye. It appeared to be a shimmering blue-black color, its flesh-if it could be termed as such-possessing an almost metallic sheen. It had no recognizable form, but was instead simply a mound, a bulk, perhaps roughly the size of a one-nman tent. It seemed composed of a mass of jagged shapes, like overlapping beaks or loosely fitting scales. At the outer edges of its "body" were hundreds of hair-thin tentacles, or filaments, that moved languidly, like hair underwater. Indeed, the creature itself seemed to be shuddering, rippling, breathing constantly. Steve watched as with one final, hideous crunch, Mabel's body crumpled like a Coke can before folding completely in two, and then disappeared into whatever passed for the creature's maw.
There followed a silence-a stunned pause of perhaps two seconds-and then Sue and Max started firing. The noise was incredible in the confines of the hotel room. Bullets tore into the creature and gouged huge chunks of plaster out of the wall behind it. The creature let out a nerve-shredding, metallic bellow, like the scream of a buzz saw, and started to move, to flow, towards them. It was evident that the bullets were hurting it, though there was no blood, no ichor, no discernible sign of physical damage. The three of them scattered before the creature's advance, Max and Sue diving to the left, Steve-despite his injury-throwing himself to the right. The crea-ture made no move to attack, simply passed between them, a shimmering, crackling presence, more suggestion than shape. As it flowed through the door and into the corridor, Sue screamed a warning to the two girls.
