The speaker was by now at the opposite side of the courtyard, and almost going out of view as he stalked his way to the front entrance.
Cai heard the whinnying of the horse; the stamping of its feet. It neighed loudly and the speaker swung his gun towards the stable. As the horse bolted from the doorway, the man fired; its lightning intensity flung the scene into a stark, orange-yellow illumination – the mud and the puddles and the grey-stone walls, the glass in the frames of abandoned tractors and stacks of anonymous barrels suddenly all appearing, suddenly all the same gunshot-colour. A whip-crack explosion burst through the silence. The horse cried out and reared its front legs before collapsing forward. Behind it, the shadow of stranger number two appeared, and Cai could hear him say “You fucking idiot.”
But then he vanished; an arm had appeared and wrapped itself around his throat and pulled him inside. The speaker sprinted across the mud, slipping, as another shot rang out within the stable; its light sparking out from between the cracks.
The speaker jumped over the prone horse and pointed the rifle inside, cautiously walking forward. Entering bottom-right, Ruby appeared; the top of her heard a black circle, her arms thrust forward with the pistol gripped in her hands. She walked forward with purpose, squelching through the mud. The speaker heard her and swung around. His rifle didn’t have chance to fully turn before bullets flew from the pistol; bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, click… click. He fell after the first shot; the rest were redundant, puncturing his flesh.
Cai released the breath he had been holding.
Ruby shouted “Nate,” and stood up against the side of the stable entrance, listening. The fallen horse and man lay at her feet. Faint wisps of air circled from the horse’s nose. “Nate?” She peered around and then entered at the sound of another gunshot.
*****
The water of Afon Rheidol was grey, reflecting the clouds in its slowly meandering journey down to Aberystwyth’s quay. Cai looked grey too, and more gaunt then he’d ever recalled. He’d come down to the edge to wash, splash some water on his face to wake up, but instead had found himself looking at his own reflection.
Water lapped at his boots.
Green fronds protruded from the bank; soon it would all be too overgrown and any passer-by would need to hack, slash or otherwise stomp their authority on the greenery to reach the edge. Cai liked the thought of this.
He wiped his hand through the reflection, feeling the cold at his fingertips. Already red from the increasingly chilly wind, it barely registered. He rubbed his hands together in the water until his reflection was entirely scrubbed and left the water’s edge behind.
Not much further to go now.
It would be a bit of a climb up the steep hillside leading off the main road, but at least he was close. He would be home by dusk.
He wiped his hands on his jacket and pocketed them. He watched his feet through he mildly swampy marshland until they reached the safe, solid tarmac again.
They were waiting for him; his inhuman friends. Of this, he was now sure. They had been changed, and whatever had happened to them, his wish now was that the same fate had not befallen his father.
They hadn’t spoken a word. When he’d awakened, the sun was at midday and they were outside, dressed, keeping lookout. The horse, the man by the stable; both were gone. Cai had retreated inside, gathered his things and set off. Half-way across the field he had looked back, a part of him hoping that they weren’t following him. But they were.
He looked at the ground now and continued walking, arrow straight along the centre-line partition. He could feel their presence following.
The dotted white line became a visual metronome – black to white to black; and even then after a while the dull grey pervaded and seemed to merge the two contrasts together. Cai was tired and hungry and each step was substantial, each step was heavy on his eyelids. Each step was another step closer to his childhood room; his bed he knew they hadn’t replaced. Maybe some of his posters were still on the wall.
His childhood didn’t belong in this Universe.
The wind blew and he raised the hood of his coat, tightening the drawstring to prevent the air getting inside.
My childhood doesn’t belong here.
My memories… blueberry muffins still steaming in the centre of the table… cigar smoke coming in from the living room… cleaning the morning fire-pit ash… riding my first BMX… mother’s silly laughter… spankings across the arse and sometimes the face… breaking a finger in the gate… the first time I kissed Jane… the snow on the hills, endless whiteness, and overturning sleds… watching the moon from the crack in the curtains…
Cai stopped.
He sat down, crossed his legs, and held his head in his hands.
His stomach growled – he knew it wanted feeding, but he was too tired, too sad.
Closing his eyes felt good. Closing his eyes felt right. He let his body roll to the side.
*****
“Is this the way?” asked Nate.
Cai ignored him and continued down the road, side-stepping past the frozen, rotting corpses of Aberystwyth’s old inhabitants – or perhaps tourists. Two-storey detached homes – new-builds and cottages – had given way to longer strings of terraced houses and bungalows. Most of these were smashed, or burned, or smashed and burned and razed to the ground; whole rows of decrepitude littered with ashen bodies half-in and half-out of doorways-no-more. The coal-black skin on these bodies had softened and peeled as time and rain had fallen on them.
Cai walked on and held his breath.
"Cai," said Ruby.
"Dangerous," followed Nate as they both stepped over another body. It was Cai's turn to lead the way now; past an exploded petrol station with its cavernous hold exposed and brimming with rainwater; past a cricket ground long overgrown with a group of marauding walkers shuffling around that failed to notice them as they walked on; past a primary school with children's colourful paintings still flourishing in the windows (a barricade of cars across the car park entrance); into the heart of town where bullets had strewn patchwork-blood to the fascias of terraced houses still standing, riddled windows with cobwebs of cracks, their victims piled as though shovelled with a snowplough on the pavements. Moans, murmurs, groans, the sound of slick movement – blood and feces and bile sliding, sliding – issued from sections where limbs still swayed, reached, moved.
Cai walked on from memory, his eyes almost closed, his lungs filling in short, rapid breaths that still failed to completely block the smells. He followed the tarmac; whatever he stepped over, stepped on, stepped around; it was just an obstacle that had perhaps fallen from the back of a lorry, or a toy a child had left in the road. At a roundabout, he turned off the main road and headed down Queen's Road; a narrower affair lined at intervals by maple trees planted by the council. They had grown large since he had last visited; would continue to grow even larger. Three-storey Victorian town houses, painted green, yellow, or white, stood empty. Not one boarded up window. Not one sign of life still existing.
A grassy pavilion marked the next intersection where an old decorative flowerbed that may have spelled 'Welcome' or 'Wales' or 'Aber', now spelled a large, round, black 'O'.
St Paul's Methodist Church, all tan brick and PVC windows, claimed the Rapture had come, or someone else had claimed it on their behalf, with a sign that read 'Hell awaits the non-believers'.
Fuck your hell.
Closed in, the streets growing narrower and the terraced houses stretching their coffin-lined brick facades from intersection to intersection, Cai glanced back and saw the two strangers, two humans-not-humans, still following. Ruby’s belly only slightly pronounced. He turned forward, eyes down, ignoring the bodies.
Pregnant. With what? What kind of baby could those two create? And into what world? And what help did they need from him?
Flesh and bone from the corner of his eye turned into a red bundle of – what? Joy? Hatred? He imagined Ruby splayed on his pa
rent’s bed, naked, bulbous of belly and sheening sweat in orange candlelight. Saw darkness between her legs and then a gushing of dark-red blood that would soak and stain the mattress. Something fell out of her. Something he couldn’t imagine.
No.
At last, it seemed, and relieving, the pressure of the narrowing street gave way to a short road that ended at the pavilion. Cai fixed his eyes on the sea; that great uncaring mass of ocean, grey as the clouds and tempered by winds that pulled at the distant waves. It was stillness, yet always moving. It would always move. Always go on. Always be here. He moved towards it – this street almost clear of bodies – until he was leaning up against the barrier on the edge of the pavilion. The black sand began about five or six metres below, and then stretched a few hundred yards out to the ebbing water. A few seagulls circled the air over it, with others combing the beach, as though inland no longer interested them now that the local fish and chip shop was out of business. Cai watched them bobbing. He breathed in the salt and seaweed. He breathed out the rot in his lungs.
Ruby startled him by touching his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me, love,” he said, turning right and walking along the boardwalk; four- and five-story Victorian houses, in arrays of colours; blue, pink, green; in varying shades, overlooked the beach and provided unobstructed views of the ocean. From hotels and bed and breakfasts, to restaurants and fish and chip shops, they gave way to student housing; halls of residence: halls of the undead.
Eventually, Cai reached the end of the boardwalk and kicked the bar of the thick metallic railing – an Aberystwyth tradition – and pressed his belly up against it, looking out to the rocks.
Nate and Ruby joined him at his side, and said something that sounded like “Farm.”
“It’s past. We passed it, I mean. Back up the hill, somewhere.” Bare. Lifeless. Dad, if you’re there, I don’t want you to be there.
“You can take care of yourselves,” said Cai, lifting first one leg, then another, over the railing. He held on tightly and bent his knees, then jumped down to the rocks and sand. He landed with a thud and rolled. The sea did not reach up this far. The sand was soft, and grainy, and clung to his clothes as he walked towards the seagulls. After a hundred metres or so he began to leave footprints in the wet sand. Wind gushed across the beach and blew his hair to the right. For a while, he turned into the wind and walked against it, removing his backpack, removing his coat, before resetting his aim on the sea. The coat caught the wind and cascaded in intermittent cartwheels across the barren sands, while the weight of the bag held it in place.
Nate could taste the salt on his tongue if he breathed in through his mouth; some other things too: something like the kippers that used to sit on a shelf in the fridge on mornings when he was young, only stronger, fishier. The brawn of the fish market in Birmingham, undiluted by the meats of the cow and sheep and pig, concentrated in the fragrance that now settled in his watering mouth with the taste of sea-life; the astringency of the seaweed, the sweetness of distant rock-pool-bound barnacles and muscles and salt-water shrimp, the bitterness of trapped and dead pollack or wrasse. The back of his throat itched and scratched, as though he had swallowed some sea-water and was now coughing it up, almost choking. The air was thick when he breathed through his nostrils only, but at least the strength of the scents was diluted.
The wind gushed again, freezing, and he worried for Ruby and the baby. He put an arm around her and held her close, but she was still warm. Warmer, perhaps, than he was.
Ruby squeezed back, her other hand on her belly, wondering if the baby would like fish and whatever else they could get from the sea and the beach, if they chose to stay here. This place was ripe – she could smell it, imagine the richness of the animals living so close to the land, if only they could learn to hunt the seas. Would this be a good place to raise her? Or him – she didn’t mind either way – but she kept referring to the baby as a girl nevertheless.
Somewhere among the driftwood of dreams and thoughts floating through Nate and Ruby’s head; sometime between the stranded trails of shallow streams slowly meandering across the bridge, and the turning arms of Cai’s coat in the wind, his head disappeared from the surface of the sea.
Part Five: Ascension
At the end of the boardwalk was a path that stretched up into Constitution Hill; its consistent use still carved into the hillside despite the overgrown grass. Flanked by the Cliff Railway with its counterbalancing tram system to take you to the top – its tram-cars now overturned and laying in broken glass at the Station House at the bottom of the hill – the path lead Nate and Ruby to the top. There, the old beacon that was lit for sailors still stood, and the view was magnificent. They could see over the whole of Aberystwyth and into Cardigan Bay, and down into Clarach Bay. The perfect vantage point to spot anyone or anything that might threaten them.
But it was too windy for comfort, and they didn’t even need much comfort. The café at the top of the hill provided some shelter for a few days, and food and water, and they convalesced on a mattress of clothes and table sheets all jumbled up, sometimes heading out to prey on easy wildlife, such as sheep, beneath the stars as the wind traversed the valleys.
Alone again, they no longer had to withhold themselves from each other; they could let their urges control their desires, control their actions, once again; so that many nights and days were spent doing nothing but eating, drinking and lying naked together after animalistic sex; licking the blood from wounds they had only just created, perhaps on a stretch of neck or a ridge of pelvis bone. Sometimes they washed the mud off in pools of rainwater that gathered in wells someone had dug; sometimes they let the rain do it itself. In the wells, their image rippled and played and transmuted until it barely resembled them anymore.
“Who are we now?” whispered Ruby one morning, biting Nate’s lip as he pushed himself inside her.
“Us,” he hissed.
Outside, rain slashed against glass.
She opened her eyes to watch him; he was everything to her now and she loved every ridge of his brow; his scowl; his torch-like eyes; those teeth: his grip on her arms as he held them above her head was exhilarating – she imagined those hands on her throat and salivated. His coarse hair rubbed and scratched her breasts and stung her nipples into sharp resonance; already darkening, they stood stiffly in the onslaught of his thrusts. He had grown – so much of him had grown – and inside her, he had grown most of all. His gift was an immediate bounty that she needed to give in to, but couldn’t. It was an exhilaration almost too much to bare, and not enough. His facial-hair grazed against her cheek and she pawed her face, her nose and brow, into it. If she could have purred, she would have.
Days later, they left the top of the seaview hillside and explored the caravan parks of Clarach Bay. The beach here was shallower and shorter than Aberystwyth, and down on the beach, the pair stripped and dove into the water, heading out two, three, four hundred metres; feeling like the over-large mammals they were but not floundering. Often, Ruby watched as Nate dived for minutes at a time, seeing the bottom of his dark feet vanish in the depths. After some attempts, he claimed simply that it was too murky to see properly, and anything that might be caught, would move too quickly for him. This was not their territory.
Nate dried and dressed on the beach, staring out at the sea with frustration. He had sensed all that there was out there; so close, at his slippery claws even. He smiled and thought “Guess if we want fish, it’ll have to be the old fashioned way.”
Crabs moved in the rock pools as Nate and Ruby explored them – part-hunter, part-child – but they were small. The wrong time of year perhaps. Or the species. They did not know, and besides, the crabs were out of sight too quickly to catch.
“Did we say once about coming to the seaside?” asked Nate.
“I think so,” said Ruby. They were lying on sand and staring at the sky.
“Is it better?”
“I don’t know.”
&
nbsp; “I think it’s sad.”
“Why?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I don’t know.” Nate was tired and falling asleep – they hadn’t slept for thirty-eight hours. “It’s the end. Nowhere else to go. Trapped.”
“No boats.”
“Big boats.”
“What?”
Nate laughed. “Just imagine. Us, just us two. Maybe baby too. Getting on one of those big boats. Maybe you get the key, maybe it works. Then we try and drive it out of the harbour. Only we crash it.”
*****
“I’m scared,” said Ruby.
Nate shifted the cabinet they had been using nightly as a barricade back across the door. The wind buffeted the sides of the caravan.
“You shouldn’t go for so long.”
“You wanted to stay here,” said Nate. “Food is further away.”
“What you got?”
Nate held out a lamb’s leg.
Arms outstretched, Ruby almost begged for it, but Nate was quick across the floor and soon she had the flesh in her arms, devouring it eagerly. “Don’t remember what this was like cooked,” she said.
“Not as nice.”
“Don’t want something to happen and you’re not here.”
“I know. You need food.” Nate sat down next to her, his scent all copper and grass and sweat.
“I’m scared.”
“Here now.”
“No…” Ruby rested for a second, placing the lamb leg on her stomach. She could feel movement inside now; little kicks, nudges, spasms. “Scared for baby.”
“Will be fine. She. Him. Will be fine.”
“The more I look at us now. It can only be more like us now?”
“It? Thought she?”
“More and more I think ‘it’.”
Nate sidled up to Ruby and pushed an arm around her. “It’s ours. Our baby. All that matters. Still ours.”
“In this world.”
The Risen Page 19
