by Mark Morris
"Get out of its way! Open the nearest door and shut yourselves in! Don't move till we tell you!"
Afterwards. Blood on the carpet. Silence apart from Max's too-rapid breathing. Steve lay, swimming in the treacly misery of his own pain, traumatized by what he had seen, thinking that the legions of the drowned had been the lucky ones, after all.
Abby fell to her knees on the carpet beside him. "Dad," she whispered. She put her arms around him, lay her head on his chest. "Dad, Dad...
The rustling of movement. The sound of people stirring, rising, attempting to pull themselves back together. Max's breathing slowing, becoming a series of shuddering breaths. Sue's voice, low and shell-shocked: "That's it. Easy. Deep breaths."
Then Max's voice. High and raw. "What was that thing?What was it?"
Sue again:"It's like the thing I saw in London. The little girl."
"But what the fuck was it?"
"I don't know."
"It killed Mabel. It just... it fucking gobbled her up, man!"
Steve felt Abby stiffen. He opened his eyes and saw her sit up, horror and incomprehension on her face. "What do you mean, it killed Mabel?" she said. "Mabel's not dead! She's not!"
There was silence. Then Sue said softly, "I'm afraid she is."
"No!" wailed Abby. She looked at Steve. "Tell me it's not true, Dad! Please tell me Mabel's not dead!"
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he whispered.
Abby let out a wailing scream, then collapsed across him, her body heaving with sobs. Steve wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. His arum and ribs were burning with his daughter's weight, but he didn't care.
There was a thumping from farther down the corridor. Then Libby's muffled voice. "What's happening? Can I come out now?"
"You can come out," Sue shouted wearily.
"Where's Greg?" asked Max in a dull voice. He was slumped against the wall beneath the window, his gun across his knees, looking exhausted. "And where's Marco? Do you think that thing ate them too?"
Then a new voice, weak, from low down: "I'm here."
Sue looked around. "Greg? Where are you?"
"He's under the bed," said Libby, who had just entered the room. She saw the blood on the carpet. "Oh, God. What happened?"
No one answered. Max and Sue were scrambling across to the bed, delving under it, reaching for Greg.
"Gently," Sue said. Together they eased Greg out. He was on his back, his injured arm clamped protectively to his side, hand curled like a claw on his chest. He was white-faced, sweating. Steve wondered whether this was what they would all be reduced to sooner or later, hiding from the monsters, cowering under the bed like children.
"Has he gone?" Greg asked in a rasping voice.
"Has who gone?" said Sue.
"Marco."
"We ain't seen Marco, man," said Max. "Only you and... and Mabel."
Greg shook his head. "No, no, it was Marco. The thing that attacked Mabel. It was Marco and then it wasn't. It changed."
They stared at him in disbelief, and then quietly Sue said, "Oh my God."
"You mean... that thing was Marco all along?" said Libby.
"Not all along," Sue replied, "but you remember how aggressive Marco was before he stomped off, and then how quiet he was when he came back?"
"You think it wasn't Marco who came back?" said Max. "You think it was that thing?"
Sue nodded.
"But that's impossible," said Libby.
"Try telling him that," said Max, nodding at Greg. "Try telling Mrs. B."
Abby raised her head from Steve's chest. Her eyes were red from crying.
"But that means that thing's been living with us," she said. "Living amongst us."
Sue nodded grimly. "Which means we can't trust anyone anymore." She glanced around the room, her eyes briefly resting on every one of them. "Not even each other."
Sunday, 15`h October
I know I haven't written anything for a while, but that's because since we lost Mrs. B 10 days ago, everything's been pretty much the same. We've been walking during the day, scavenging food where we can (I'm SO SICK of food out of packets and tins that I'd give anything for an apple or a banana or afresh piece of chicken) and finding somewhere to sleep at night. Although the motorway has been clear enough for us to walk around obstacles, progress has been slow cos Greg's injury has really knocked him for 6. Before, he was quite a fit old man. In fact, I wouldn't even have called him "old," even though he's about 70. But since he got shot he HAS seemed old. He walks slowly cos of the pain in his ribs and he gets tired quicker and he can't use his arm properly. We're not having to carry him or anything, but we're not going as quickly as Sue and Max would like to.
Sue's pretty patient tho. She knows people are injured and she's good at encouraging them. She's tough, but she's quite kind. I like her. Also, she usually seems to know what to do, which I suppose comes from being a policewoman.
She's sort of now become the leader of the group. Before, I would have said Dad was the leader, even tho he's never been the sort of per-son who likes organizing things and making big decisions. Since he got hurt, tho, I think he's happy to leave decisions and plans up to Sue. His injury doesn't slow him down as much as Greg's does, but I know it hurts him and makes him feel more exhausted at night than he would be normally. Usually, tho, after a few painkillers and a good night's sleep he's OK again.
I hope he'll recover properly. The cut on his arm is gross and it doesn't seem to be healing very well. Greg says that's just cos the wound was so deep. He says there's a lot of flesh to knit back together, but that it should get there eventually. But it keeps bleeding and leaking this sticky, watery stuff. Every night Libby changes his dressing, and then Greg's. She's like Florence Nightingale (and I don't mean that in a bitchy way. Libby is OK, but she still gets on my nerves sometimes). The problem is we haven't got any bandages, so we're having to make do with strips of cloth or whatever we can find-it's hard sometimes to find things that are clean enough. Greg has told Libby to put lots of disinfectant on the wounds cos he says we have to be careful of "secondary infections." I can tell from Dad's and Greg's expressions that the stuff she uses stings like hell, but they don't make too much fuss.
Food is getting a bit harder to come by, the problem being that even when we DO find loads, there's only so much we can carry with us. Also, the places where you can find food on our route, like motorway service stations, have often had people there before us. It's not a MAJOR problem at the moment, but it is getting a bit more of a worry. I know Dad and Sue have talked about it quite a lot.
Walking-wise, we're managing about 10 to 15 miles a day, which has brought us up to just south of Sheffield-the last big town we passed was Chesterfield at junction 30. Weird to think that before theflood we'd have done this journey in 2 hours in the car.
It's not all bad, tho. Some things have got better. For one thing we haven't had much rain since we left the hotel where Mrs. B died, so the ground has dried out a bit. The mud on the roads has now gone dry and crusty, so it's easier to walk on (a bit like black sand). Even inside the buildings it's dried quite a bit, tho most places stink cos all the carpets and furniture and stuff are going rotten with damp. Plus there's furry mold growing on everything, like the stuff that grows on old bread or cheese.
The dead bodies don't smell as bad as they did either, and they don't look as bad as they did. They've now gone past that horrible swollen-up phase, where they all went black and disgusting, and now they've sort of shrunk. They look more like skeletons now, except not REALLY like skeletons cos they've got this brown leathery skin wrapped around them. Their eyes have gone-dissolved or been eaten or whatever-and their lips have shrunk back so you can see all their teeth. Also there aren't as many flies around as there were, which Dad says is mainly thanks to the weather. He says if this had been summer it would have been worse, but we've had a couple of frosty days, so lots of them have died out.
Also there don't seem to be as many crabs
around as there were before. Maybe the cold and the dryness has killed them too, or maybe now the bodies are turning to old leather there isn't as much for them to eat.
The only creatures that DON'T seem to be dying out are the birds. There are loads of those, and some of them, the gulls especially, are really vicious. If we're eating outdoors they'll hover around, and sometimes they'll swoop down and snatch things like crisps or biscuits out of your hand. Max got bitten on the hand when a seagull stole a piece of fruitcake he'd been eating. It was cool, tho, cos he was so mad he took a shot at itand hit it! It was a total fluke, a one in a mil-lion chance, but that night we had roast seagull and rice for supper, which was TOTALLY delicious. If someone had told me 3 weeks ago that I'd think roast seagull was one of the yummiest things I'd ever tasted, I'd have thought they were mental.
Since Mrs. B died, we haven't seen any more monsters, or even any signs of any. I don't know how many there are or where they've come from (the blue lightning?), but knowing there are things on earth that can imitate human beings so well that we can't tell the difference is pretty freaky, and has made all of us really nervous. We haven't seen that many people over the last 10 days, but we've seen a few, and most of the time we've kept our distance from them. We've tried to warn some of them about the monsters, or find out whether they've seen them too, but now we don't bother. Most people think we're nut ters, or lying, tho we did meet this one man who was traveling with a boy about 10 who I think was his son, and as soon as he saw us he and the boy ran to the central barrier and climbed over it.
It turned out a man in Leeds had made friends with them, and then one night he'd changed and almost got the boy.The man (Colin) and the boy (Oliver) had got away by throwing a chair at it, which Colin said had seemed to confuse it. His story was bad news to us. We'd been hoping that the aliens (which is what we've started calling them) were only in London.
"Where are you headed?" Sue asked him, and he told us he was going to London.
"You don't want to go there," Max said. "That's where we've come from. There's nothing there but lots and lots of dead people."
Whatever we said, tho, we couldn't change Colin's mind. He thought there'd be more food in London, more "resources" as he put it, and he said that he thought that was where people would head for, and where any kind of rescue or aid operation would be centered. He thought we'd made a mistake by leaving there. He said he didn't know what the situation was like in Scotland, but it was just as bad in Leeds, so he didn't see why any other part of the country should be any different. Greg told him the usual thing about big cities being rife with disease, but nothing would change his mind. Dad said later that sometimes when someone gets an idea in their head, they'll cling to it no matter what, even if other people tell them that it's wrong.
So we said good-bye to Colin and Oliver and we went our separate ways.As they walked off, Sue said, `I don'tfancy their chances."
"Maybe we should have given them a gun," said Max.
Sue, tho, shook her head. "S****y tho it sounds," she said, "we can't give away our most valuable resources. We're living in a selfish world now. There's no room for charity anymore."
Dad let out a big sigh and said, "So, what does that make us?"
Sue had a really serious look on her f ace. "Survivors," she said.
Guns. That was another thing I wanted to talk about. After Mrs. B got killed, Sue said it was time we all learned how to handle and fire a gun. I didn't fancy the idea, and neither did Libby, but I guess both of us knew that it made sense. For one thing, I didn't want people having to look out for me and protect me all the time, and for an other, we had more guns than we were using-in fact, we'd brought 4 rifles and 6 pistols with us, which meant there was enough for one each plus 4 left over-and because me and Libby had been weird about touching them, it had meant Dad, Max, Sue and Greg had had to carry them strapped to their rucksacks, which wasn't fair, as they're not the lightest things in the world.
So me and Libby and Greg had lessons from Sue in how to hold the guns and load them and fire them, and now all 6 of us carry one. I hope I never have to use mine, but I suppose it DOES make me feel a bit safer. As Sue said, a gun is more a deterrent than anything else. She didn't think we'd come across many people who also had guns, and so as winter came along and food got scarcer, they might prove our most valuable resource. She said our guns would probably PREVENT violence rather than cause it, because we'd only have to show them to potential attackers to make them leave us alone. So now Sue and Max carry the rifles (which are Heckler and Koch 9mm carbine machine pistols), and the rest of us carry handguns (which are Glock 17 9mm self-loading pistols).
I think that brings everything up to date. I've pretty much got over what happened to me 10 days ago, tho I'm quite nervous of strangers now, and I get a bit more jumpy at night. I haven't had too many bad dreams, tho I think all the walking helps, cos by the time we crawl into our sleeping bags at night we're all exhausted.
Dad and Libby have got really close, which I find a bit hard to take sometimes. I had a talk with Sue about this, and she said that Dad was the only constant left in my life, that he was my rock, and that it was only natural that I should see Libby as a threat. But she also said that I would always be Dad's number one priority, and that I should cut Libby a bit of slack. She said that one of the men in the cottage had raped Libby, and that Libby was doing an incredible job of holding herself together and trying not to become an emotional burden for the rest of us. She said Libby was secretly terrified she might be pregnant, and that she needed someone to cling to as well, and that the person she had chosen was Dad. She told me that Dad was doing a fantastic job trying to help Libby through it all, and that we had to find love where we could nowadays. Then she went quiet on me (she was a bit drunk, to be honest-she'd had a load of wine and she admitted that she was gay and that she had a bit of a crush on Libby herself, but knew that nothing would ever come of it. She asked me if that was a problem, and I said no, it was no big deal. I gave her a hug and for a minute she didn't seem tough at all. She seemed just as frightened and confused as the rest of us.
Tonight we're sleeping at Woodall Services, in what used to be the main cafe/restaurant area. We've got into a routine now when we stop somewhere. Dad, Max and Sue will put on gloves and clear any bodies out of the area, and me and Libby (and Greg if he's up to it) will clear away any other rubbish until we've got a big enough space to sleep on. Then we'll put down our plastic sheets and our bed rolls and our sleeping bags. We'll look around for food and then we'll set up thegas stovewhich we all (except Greg) take turns carrying-and then we'll brew up some water and have some tea or coffee and get some food on thego. We'll light a few candles and then we'll talk for a bit,and the adults will maybe have a drink if they've found some booze, and then we'll turn in, usually about 9 or 10 o'clock. Someone will always stay on guard, and we'll do hourly shifts. Me and Greg always do one hour each, and the other 4 divide up the other 6hours or however long it is between them.
Oh, one last thing before Igo to sleep. Remember what I said about food being harder to come by now? Well, when we got here the vending machines had been raided and virtually all the edible stuff we usually find had gone. So tonight we came to a decision. We've decided that tomorrow morning, Sue and Max will get off the motorway at the next junction and go into the nearest town to find some food. We did talk about all going together so we could carry more, but we decided that it would be best if just Max and Sue went, cos a) they'd be quicker, and b) we wouldn't all want to be totally weighed down by food anyway, cos that would just slow us down.
So that's what's happening. Max and Sue are heading off at about 6, and the rest of us are having a bit more time than usual to rest and get our strength back. We're a bit nervous about splitting up the group, even for a short time, but we've all got guns, so hopefully we'll be OK.
And now I'm going to rest my aching legs and my blistered feet for a few hours. And by the end of tomorrow, hopefully, we
'll be a little bit nearer to Scotland and to seeing Mum and Dylan again.
Night-night, world.
"Whoa," said Max. "Look at that"
Sue came to a halt beside him. In the hour since leaving the service station at six A.M. the pair had made excellent progress. They had walked five miles in the slowly breaking dawn light, passing through two villages that had yielded nothing but a few odds and ends from a couple of local convenience stores. They could have spent their time going from house to house, salvaging what they could from pantries and kitchen cupboards, but they had decided to press on, find a town with a decent-sized supermarket in which everything would be centralized, rather than scrabbling through a ton of filth for the sake of a few scraps. They were now heading for the ex-mining town of Whitthorpe, which lay six miles east of the service station in which they had spent the night.
Whitthorpe was not a big place-it was basically a quartet of housing estates surrounding a main shopping area-but it was sizeable enough to merit its own Safeway or Sainsbury's. Max and Sue were on the outskirts of the town, where its biggest houses were situated, when Max stopped beside a gate that led into a large paddock. The paddock was positioned be tween two postwar properties that would have looked impressive before the flood, but which were now crumbling with water damage and filthy with caked-on silt.
It was not the houses that had drawn Max's eye, however. Lying in the paddock between them were the remains of a vast creature, almost undoubtedly a whale. It was virtually a skeleton now, its rotting flesh picked from its bones by insects and birds. Even so, in this muddy, litter-bedecked field in the middle of England, the carcass of the once majestic creature still remained an astonishing sight. Bathed in the salmon red light of dawn, the scene reminded Sue of the cover of the kind of science fiction novels she had read in her teenage years. Seeing the whale was like looking upon the remains of an alien creature lying beneath the fiery skies of a distant planet.
