Piggies

by Nick Gifford

  They split up in the main yard. Rose-Marie, Adam and Rick headed towards the back of the building to see what they could find. Ben followed Zeb and Anna towards the barn.

  Inside, there was another tractor and lots of attachments for ploughing and harvesting. Ben didn’t know what it all was. He was a town boy, after all.

  He stopped, shuddered. He wasn’t a town boy. He lived in the woods. He was a woodlander now, whatever the truth of his past.

  The other two had found a store room. They waved Ben over.

  “Here, wrap the blades in these.” Zeb handed Ben some rags and pointed to a selection of chisels and saws he’d taken from a tool cabinet.

  Ben set to work, wrapping the cutting edges so that the tools could safely be put in a sack and carried back to the woods.

  Somewhere nearby a horse whinnied.

  The three finished wrapping the tools. Then Anna gathered up the sack and slung it over her shoulder. “See you later,” she said.

  Ben watched as she headed off across the farmyard towards the woods. It made sense, he supposed: she would gain nothing by hanging around to wait for the others.

  “Come on,” said Zeb.

  Ben went with Zeb to a door at the back of the barn. It was open a crack, and they could see through to the side of the farmhouse. The windows were open and voices spilled out into the mild summer night. Occasionally, a figure moved across a window.

  It all looked so normal.

  “Keep watch,” said Zeb. “I’m going to look around a bit more, see what else I can find.”

  ~

  Ben was alone.

  He wondered if this was some kind of plan: maybe Alik had told them to lead him away from the woods and abandon him. But every so often, he heard a small sound from the depths of the barn and he knew Zeb was not far away.

  A horse whinnied again. From what Ben could see, the back of the barn butted on to some stables. Anna had said they had a riding school here.

  He eased the door open a little wider. There seemed to be a faint light coming from the stables. Was there someone in there?

  Ben slipped outside. If he stayed close to the back of the barn, he would be in darkness.

  He edged his way along towards the stables.

  The doors were split: the top half open, the bottom closed.

  He reached the stables and stepped towards the door.

  A head and shoulders suddenly appeared in the opening.

  “Wha–?”

  Ben froze. He was in the shadows still. Zeb had taught him that movement attracts the eye: stand without moving and you can be near invisible.

  A bright light shone in his face.

  “You,” said a girl’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

  He recognised the voice. The light flicked out and for a moment Ben was still blinded. Then his vision returned and he saw that she had emerged from the stables, clutching a saddle to her chest.

  It was the girl from town. The one with the spiky blonde hair and the tight jeans.

  Rachel. That was her name. She’d been with the two boys.

  She’d let them drink her blood.

  Ben started to back away.

  She stood there, smirking at him.

  And then there was another sound: a sudden swell of noise from the house as a door opened.

  “Rachel?” called a man. “Is that you out there, Rachel?”

  There was a middle-aged man standing at the open door. He looked as if he was about to come right out.

  Rachel looked from the man back to Ben again. “It’s okay,” she called. “It’s me, Dad. I’m just finishing.”

  As the man went back into the house, Ben edged away, then turned and darted into the barn.

  Zeb was by the far door, ready to run. When he saw Ben, he hurried over to him.

  “We’d better go,” hissed Ben. “There’s someone outside at the stables.”

  “Right. Okay. Let’s go.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  Zeb collected a pick-axe he must have left by the big barn doors. He handed it to Ben, and stooped again to pick up a petrol can. “Just these,” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  11 Rachel

  He saw her again, briefly, about a week later. She was out riding a pony on one of the wide tracks that cut through the eastern side of the woods.

  He was with Zeb and the two of them hid in the woodland edge as the horse and rider swept by.

  She looked peaceful and relaxed, just her and her pony and the trees. She looked normal. But she wasn’t, Ben knew. That memory of her and the two boys would be imprinted on his mind for the rest of his life.

  The next time he saw her was one of the rare occasions when he was on his own.

  ~

  He’d been in the woodland community for two weeks, now, and they still didn’t fully trust him.

  Half the people thought he was mad: a boy with no past, or with no past that anyone would believe. The others thought he was lying, covering up something in his past that he didn’t want them to know about.

  But they were unanimous in not trusting him. Walter had been more sympathetic than a lot of the woodlanders, but Ben realised that even he was suspicious. He didn’t know if Walter thought him mad or a liar, but after a while he came to understand that Walter had asked Zeb to both look after him and keep an eye on him.

  Zeb, himself, seemed to have accepted Ben now and he was far more relaxed than he had been at first. “You’ve just got to forget about what may have been,” Zeb had told him on more than one occasion. “What’s past is gone. You just need to earn people’s trust now.”

  One of the reasons Zeb was more relaxed these days was that he clearly had other things on his mind.

  This morning, Zeb had said to Ben, hesitantly, “Hey, Ben. You don’t mind if Rose-Marie tags along with us this time, do you?”

  Ben watched them together: the little looks, the way they walked so close together that they kept touching, the space between him and them.

  “How’s your grandmother?” he asked Rose-Marie, filling yet another silence.

  “She’s having a good day, thanks,” said Rose-Marie. “Complaining about the food, which is a good sign.”

  Silence again. Ben took the opportunity to study Rose-Marie as they walked. Her flame-red hair always caught the eye, but it was her easy smile that stayed in the memory. Ben had felt that she was intruding, at first, when Zeb had invited her along. Now, he realised that her presence was a good thing. Rose-Marie was well-liked in the woodland community and her acceptance of Ben could only be a good thing. In Zeb and now Rose-Marie he had two good allies.

  The three headed out towards Tippham Lakes, a series of three connected lakes on the east side of the woods. Rose-Marie’s aging grandmother was teaching her how to use traditional herbal medicines and the wet woodland around the lakes was good for some of the plants she wanted to gather.

  After a time, Ben paused and said, “Why don’t you two go on ahead? I’ll be okay on my own. We can meet up here again at noon, if you like.” It was a chance to prove that their trust in him was good judgement.

  Zeb and Rose-Marie grinned back at him. “Sure,” said Zeb. “If that’s what you want.”

  Ben watched as the two of them strode on through the alder wood. When they thought they were out of sight they held hands.

  Ben followed a narrow path that led up a slope, away from the lakes. He didn’t know what to do with himself. It was just a relief not to have someone watching over him.

  He wondered how much longer Walter would have him watched.

  ~

  Rachel was sitting on a fallen tree in a small clearing. Her grey pony was tied up to a branch, its head down, munching at the rich green grass. Rachel was carving some letters into the exposed white wood of the tree trunk.

  Ben hesitated.

  He should turn round and slip quietly back into the woods, he knew. It was foolish to even think of anything else.

&n
bsp; She saw him watching her.

  “Hello, again,” she said. She didn’t seem too bothered by his presence. “New Boy.”

  That’s what she’d called him, all that time ago in town.

  “Hi,” he said. “I was just–”

  “Just passing,” she finished for him. “Like the other night: just passing. When we met you in town I didn’t think you approved of nicking things, the way you looked when we said that’s what we’d been doing.”

  He shrugged.

  “But then you come with your mates, nicking stuff from the farm.”

  “You could have said I was there,” he said. “You had the chance.”

  She nodded. “I should have, I reckon. What did you want with all that stuff, anyway? Old tools and things.”

  And then her expression suddenly changed. “Oh! Oh my... You are, aren’t you? Lenny said you were. He said that’s why you ran away. I just thought you were scared of us: mummy’s boy – won’t share blood with just anybody. But you are, aren’t you? You’re one of them: a feral!”

  He started to back away.

  She raised her hands in some kind of peace gesture. “No,” she said. “Don’t run away again. It’s okay. I’m not going to bite!”

  She giggled, then stopped.

  “Really, New Boy. It’s okay. I won’t tell anybody. I won’t do anything. Don’t run away.”

  “My name’s not New Boy,” said Ben. “It’s–”

  “Piggy,” said Rachel. “I’ll call you ‘Piggy’, okay?”

  ~

  “Have you lived in the woods all your life?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Are there many of you?”

  “What do your kind eat?”

  “Do you still fancy me?”

  And, in a weak voice: “Oh my god, you really are, aren’t you? A walking, talking feral! You really are, aren’t you?”

  Rachel was full of questions. He realised she must be lonely, living out in Tippham. From what she told him, she had no brothers or sisters and most of her friends lived in town.

  He avoided most of her questions. He wasn’t stupid enough to tell her where the community was, or to tell her anything that might lead people there.

  He shouldn’t be talking to her at all, he knew. But she was curious about him, and she was funny and suddenly it felt good to be with someone who didn’t seem suspicious of everything he said and did.

  “I haven’t been here long,” he told her. “A couple of weeks or so. I’m just hiding out here while I work out what to do.”

  “Where are you from, then, if you’re not from here?”

  He looked away. He didn’t want to start all that again: the disbelief, the suspicion. She might just laugh at him if he told her, and that would be even worse.

  “What’s it like?” he asked her. “Your kind. What you do to each other.” He didn’t know how to put it into words. It would sound stupid.

  She smirked at him and tipped her head sideways, so her neck was exposed. “Easy enough to find out,” she said to him in a low voice. “Is that what you want?”

  He looked at the smooth skin of her neck. There was no sign of the wound that Lenny had inflicted – they must heal quickly, he supposed. He wanted to touch the skin, see if it really was that smooth.

  She laughed at the look on his face. And then her expression changed and, slowly, her upper lip slid back from her teeth. They were neat, small teeth, like a row of pearls across the front. Her canines were longer, but not the dagger-like fangs you see in the movies.

  “It’s easy,” she said. And then she tossed her head, laughing at the expression of horror on his face.

  “That’s not what you meant, is it?” she said a short time later, struggling to look serious. She paused, then said, “It’s good for you. That’s what they always tell you. It spreads immunity around, protects us from diseases. And anyway,” she concluded, grinning, “it tastes great!”

  More quietly, she added, “In any case, what I don’t really understand is what it’s like without it. You... your kind... creepy.” She laughed and ran a hand through her spiky hair. “Who’d have thought?” she said. “A real live feral. You’ve got a nerve, haven’t you? Marching around as if you own the place. Sneaking up on people in the woods. Who’d have thought?”

  He left her a short time later. He had to meet the others. “I come out here a lot,” she said, as he was leaving. “This is my favourite place.”

  He nodded and headed off into the woods.

  When he looked back, he saw her staring after him. He walked on, not sure if she could still see him in the shade.

  It was a mistake, he knew. It could only cause trouble. He remembered his determination earlier this morning that he would do as Zeb urged him and try to earn the trust of the woodlanders. Talking to Rachel was hardly the best way to do that!

  But... she was fun and she was interested in him and he didn’t feel that she was out to trap him with everything she said.

  He shook himself, trying to see sense. He forced that image into his head: Rachel, her bloody neck exposed, Lenny and Stacker with her blood smeared across their grinning faces.

  He didn’t know what to think any more. He couldn’t get a grip on the rules of this strange and frightening world.

  A little later, he met up with Zeb and Rose-Marie. “Hey,” said Zeb. “Anything happen?”

  Ben shook his head. No. He’d only spent half an hour talking with a vampire who was more human than a lot of the people who lived in the woodland community. That was all.

  12 The Trade

  It was dark. Ben had been asleep, but now he was alert.

  What had woken him?

  He raised himself on his elbows and looked around. The two brothers, Rick and Adam, were asleep a little farther along the community hall. At the far end Marty and Jude and their two children were fast asleep. Everyone else lived in the smaller family shelters during the summer months.

  Must have been a dream.

  He settled himself again. Then he heard footsteps outside, and then the cry again: an animal cry, but Ben knew it was no animal making that sound. It was an alarm call used by woodlanders on lookout duty.

  There were beasts about.

  The others were awake now. Ben rose to his feet and moved across to join the brothers. At the far end of the hall, Marty and Jude were calming their children, keeping them silent.

  Nobody said a word. They were well drilled.

  At the first sign of trouble, they were to be quiet and stay hidden wherever they were. The community clearing was well hidden from passing paths and trails. Zeb had told him it was four years since a beast had walked through, and even then the signs of settlement had been well hidden.

  But they were prepared, even so. If the alarm call became higher pitched and repeated, it meant the beasts were close. If that should happen, the woodlanders would slip away into the surrounding trees, following any of several well-rehearsed routes to safety.

  The cry sounded again. A single call: the beasts were near, but were not a serious threat just yet.

  Adam had opened the hall’s main door a short way. Ben went across to look out into the darkness.

  There was nothing to see. Whoever had been moving about outside was out of sight now.

  The cry again.

  Was this the attack that Walter feared? Had the beasts had enough of the foraging raids and decided to round up the ferals?

  Why else would they be out in the woods in the middle of the night?

  Ben waited, his eyes straining against the night’s murk.

  Nothing.

  Then the call changed: lower and softer, now. The beasts had passed by. They were a safe distance away.

  Ben felt the tension rushing out of his body. He had been holding his breath. Rick and Adam returned to their sleeping area, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Ben stayed by the door.

  He still wasn’t used to this life. He had thou
ght he was learning to adapt. Either that, or he was re-learning the ways of feral life, recovering some of the memories he had blocked out.

  But the fear was always there: the constant threat from the beasts.

  He spotted a small group entering the clearing from one of the woodland trails. Alik was one of them, his long black hair and thick beard distinctive even in the darkness. Robby was there, too, strutting along at Alik’s side.

  And just behind them was the taller figure of Zeb, along with two others.

  They must have been out foraging, Ben supposed. Raiding a farm, or maybe one of the villages, or even Kirby itself. He wondered how close they had come to the beasts. He could imagine what it must have been like, hiding out in the woods until the lookout signalled the all-clear. It had been frightening enough for Ben, but to actually have been out in the woods when the alarm went up...!

  He went back to his sleeping area and tried to shut those thoughts out of his mind. That was the only way, he realised: the only way to live with constant fear is to block it out whenever you can.

  ~

  Zeb looked as if he’d been in a fight.

  The next morning he led Ben and some of the others out to work on what they called “the barricades”: the woodlanders had constructed a buffer zone surrounding the community clearing. Over the years, young trees had been trained to grow across any possible paths and branches had been pulled down to grow across openings. Brambles and honeysuckle had been planted and woven through gaps.

  The result was that the area surrounding the settlement was so overgrown that any casual walker would turn away. Only the woodlanders knew the safe paths through the tangled masses of vegetation.

  Zeb was quiet as they headed for an area where the barricade was being spread outwards. There were dark shadows under his eyes and his lower lip was cracked and puffed up as if someone had hit him.

  After a while, Ben found himself working alongside Zeb, hauling a fallen branch across a space between two trees. They could train honeysuckle over the branch: the cuttings took easily in the rich woodland soil.