Breeding Ground

by Sarah Pinborough

  “Chloe?”

  “Now! Fucking get out now!” Her head spun round to me, angry and venomous as she screamed, but I’m not even sure if the words would have been enough to make me leave, to move my shell-shocked and shattered body from that spot, if two of her teeth hadn’t flown out as she screeched.

  Watching their flight, almost in slow motion, I suddenly knew beyond all doubt that I had been a fool. There was nothing left to hold on to. She was right. She wasn’t Chloe anymore, no matter how much I wanted her to be. And the last bit of my Chloe, the last pure bit of her, wanted me to leave, to get the fuck out of there. While I still could.

  Turning my back on her, not wanting to see anymore, not wanting to know anymore, I fumbled at the back door, trying to turn the key, finally yanking it open and stumbling out into the light before the headache took over. The early morning air was fresh and new and I ran into it, my muscles burning with the sudden activity, sobs tearing from my chest, and I ran and I ran and I didn’t look back. The houses on either side of the street loomed aggressively above me, and I turned down towards the river, running alongside it until I reached the old aqueduct that separated Stony from Old Stratford. My trousers, wet with piss, rubbed at my skin, but my mind was ablaze with the threat of madness.

  Leaning against the worn stone surface, built so many long centuries ago, I stared up at the branches and sunlight above until the sweat cooled on my face and finally my stomach cramped. Twisting sideways, I tipped my head forward and threw up my madness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By the time I straightened up, my mouth and throat were aching and sore from the constant heaving, having retched loudly and angrily long after there was anything left inside me; but the hot white fear of insanity seemed to have passed. Shivering, I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. I’d been out here lost in shock and battling the onset of madness for over two hours. Jesus.

  Looking around at the lush fields and the river with its neat towpath, nostalgia washed over me. I’d come walking down here all my life, but despite its familiarity I couldn’t deny the newness in the air. What I knew couldn’t be trusted. It was a brave new world I was looking at. There was no real human sound for a start, no cars, no children shouting at their friends, no hint of a passing conversation. I’d only experienced something like that once before in my life, on a holiday to Los Angeles. Tired with the shallowness of Hollywood, I’d hired a car and driven out to Death Valley, slicing through the silent red desert, a vast expanse that went on forever as far as I could see. I’d felt as if I were the last man on earth out there with just dust carried on the echo of wind for company, suddenly realising how fragile my existence was, how easily I could never be found should an accident happen. I drove more carefully after that moment of fear.

  Standing there in the shadow of the aqueduct, I felt like that again, only this time for all I knew I was the only person left alive. The only sane one at any rate. Blocking out thoughts of Chloe, I remembered the horror of my frozen state in the lounge. Was that where all the children and people were now? No. I couldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t. Logic dictated that if I was here and okay, then other people must be wandering around shell-shocked, too.

  The cool breeze drifted past, reminding me that I couldn’t stay here, I had to move, to try and find out what the hell was going on. My jeans were acrid with dried piss and I was sure that I’d probably more than splashed myself with bile during my throwing up. At least that gave my journey a place to start. I needed fresh clothes.

  Finding my legs steadier than I expected, I pushed away from the wall and followed it until I reached the steep stairs leading back up to the road that ran across the aqueduct. The gate squealed as it opened, the sound sending a shudder through my insides. The violence of the noise was out of place in this new, hushed world. Closing it behind me, I started to stride back to High Street, forcing confidence into my walk. If I allowed a noisy gate to make me nervous, then I was done for. Still, if I said that the dull thud of my shoes on the pavement didn’t ring a little too loudly in my ears for my nerves, then I’d be lying.

  I followed the curve of the wall until it bloomed into buildings—the mix of old and new shops and houses that made up the main street of the town—and then slowed down, nervous because of the silence. I couldn’t believe all the people that filled the houses around me were dead and gone. If the local population were alive but not out here with me, then the alternatives were spine-chilling and I wasn’t ready in my head to go there yet. There was only so far I could push my sanity in one morning.

  To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what had happened to Chloe, let alone anyone else, but I wasn’t going to go back and find out. If she were still alive, then she wasn’t my Chloe anymore.

  Stony wasn’t a town with many clothes shops. After going through a period of floundering without direction during the eighties, it had finally found a niche for itself in the retail world—small outlets and boutiques filled with gifts and knickknacks, glassware and ornaments. It was where people in Milton Keynes went to fill Christmas stockings and to buy that special something for a birthday present. But it wasn’t a place to come to if you were looking for the latest in jeans or designer gear. In fact, it wasn’t a place to come for stuff to wear if you were under retirement age. There was one shop that sold relatively good clothes for women; Chloe had been known to pick up a couple of things from it, but there was nothing here for men. Apart, of course, from Morris’s Menswear, halfway up High Street.

  It’s funny the things you totally ignore in your everyday life. Morris’s Menswear had been here for as long as I could remember, passed down through the family, surviving the cull of bankruptcies and repossessions that swept the town in earlier decades, but I had never even really looked at it, let alone considered going in. It still retained the same unassuming frontage that it had for years, its very blandness maybe the key to its success. It was aimed at a breed almost extinct, especially this far out of London, those kind of men who like to know their tailor, who like to buy their country casuals and business suits all in the same place, who like it that someone knows that “sir dresses to the left or right.” I didn’t reckon there were many of them under fifty.

  Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and my options were limited. I crossed the road at the churchyard and headed towards the tan awning, passing some of the smaller privately owned businesses, the pet shop, one card shop, a florist; all shut. No explanations on the door this time. By the time I reached the small co-op, it was obvious that Stony Stratford was not open for business today. All the doors were locked and the gloom behind the shutters and windows showed no sign of impending life.

  The sun however, was beating down, keeping the air pleasantly warm. It was shaping up to be the best day of the year as far as the weather was concerned. It seemed that Mother Nature was oblivious to the problems of man, or maybe she just didn’t give a shit, and who could really blame her? It wasn’t as if we’d really played fair, had we? But that’s a debate for another time.

  Pushing my shoulder into the thick glass of the door, I realised that it was going to take more than just a shove to get inside. There was no way I could just punch it and break it; it was too strong for that. Sighing, I squinted and peered along the empty street. I was going to need a brick or a missile of some kind and I wasn’t sure where I was going to find it. Smiling, I saw the metal swing board of the butcher’s—falsely advertising friendly service inside the abandoned shop—and jogged down to fetch it. It was heavier than it looked, and as I hurled it towards the glass window I flinched and cringed from the smash, expecting an alarm to rip through the empty air around me, heralding my descent into crime to any who cared to listen.

  After the shattering of glass there was nothing. There must have been more pressing matters to attend to than setting the alarm for whoever was last to leave the shop premises, and I straightened up to get a good look at my first successful break-in. Not the most subtle approach, b
ut it had worked. The models were wearing a dusting of glass bits, glinting in the sunshine, and the window was no more, a thousand pieces sprayed into the heart of the shop.

  I climbed into the small room, carefully knocking out jagged shards that poked sharply at me from dangerous angles as I went, my eyes scanning ahead for any that might stab me as I passed. This was not a day to be getting injured. I doubted that A&E were up and running even if I could get myself there. I wasn’t sure that I’d make the cut if it were survival of the fittest, but if it was survival of the wariest, then I was in with a fighting chance.

  The shop was well lit from the sun outside, but the air was refreshingly cool as I brushed past the rows of suits. I needed new clothes, yes, but a shirt and tie weren’t really what I had in mind. At the far side there was a rack of shelves with neatly folder trousers and jumpers filling them, and it was there I headed, ripping them out to find some my size.

  Much to my surprise, I found a pair of pretty respectable chinos, a Levi’s T-shirt and a crew neck jumper, all of which were wearable without disgrace. Coming across some Calvin Klein underpants brought me out in a full-blown smile. A pang of pain went through me as I imagined how pleased Chloe would be at my concern for appearance at a time like this, and I shoved it aside, peeling off my dirty clothes right there in the middle of the shop, dressing quickly in their crisp clean replacements.

  Straightening up after re-tying my laces, I noticed a slimline portable radio on the counter above the till and credit card machine and my heart leapt nervously. Here was my chance to find out if anyone knew just what was going on in Stony and how widespread the problem was. Moving across the shop, my hand hovered above the On button for a second. Despite the horrors of the night before, there was still a certain amount of bliss in ignorance, and at the moment I could almost ignore the evidence to the contrary and believe that this was solely a local nightmare. I took a deep breath and pushed down on the thin steel.

  Quiet static replaced the silence. Puzzled, I checked the frequency. 98.2. Radio One should have been blurting out some new tune or another, or at least reporting on all this. I turned the dial, slowly running the full length of the FM band. Still nothing. I could feel my own pulse throbbing through my body. Surely someone was broadcasting somewhere. Surely they must be.

  Flicking a switch on the front I searched the medium and then long wave bands, my head lowered listening intently for anything, any sign of life. For a moment, a brief instant in time, I thought I heard the faint strains of an orchestra drifting in from a galaxy away, but it was gone before I could convince myself that it was really there. Despite creeping the dial backwards and forwards millimetre by millimetre trying to find it again, it was lost in the sea of white noise.

  Turning the radio off, I mulled over the options. Either there was no one the length and breadth of the country attempting to broadcast, or something had happened to the radio signal. Maybe somehow it was being blocked. With that flash of thought, I stretched over the counter and grabbed the telephone, pulling the receiver to my ear. Instead of the familiar tone, again all I could hear was deathly static. Slowly, I put it back and leaned against the counter. My hands clammy, I gazed through the vandalised window at the bright day outside, staring at everything and nothing, and my skin tingled both inside and out. If there’d been a TV there, then I guessed that all it would be delivering was snow and crackle. So what was doing it? Some coincidental breakdown in all the communication networks?

  Shivering, I remembered Chloe standing silently in the sitting room with that secretive smile on her face, her deadened eyes almost laughing at me. I’m talking to Helena. Maybe the new methods of conversation were blocking the old, all-inclusive ones. I sighed. There were too many maybes filling this morning, and I didn’t have a concrete answer to any of them.

  Perhaps if I went home I could find one or two, but the pain in my heart told me that there was no going back there. Shock was numbing my feeling of loss over Chloe, but I knew that what I was feeling was grief. Chloe was gone. I knew it in my soul. My Chloe was not coming back. Eventually, if no one started to emerge, I was going to have to break into a flat or house to face whatever was happening, but I wasn’t ready for that.

  Stepping back out onto the pavement, suddenly aware of the rumbling emptiness of my stomach, I realised that what I was ready for was breakfast. In fact, I was ravenous. Food hadn’t been on the agenda yesterday, and any scraps lingering in my system had been vomited up down by the river.

  I jogged across the road and through the small parade of shops until I got to Budgen’s, but frustratingly the double doors to the small supermarket were locked and the shutters down, someone obviously taking their responsibilities very seriously before the world went mad. Cursing under my breath, I kicked the steel and turned outward, venting my anger at everything in that one blow. God, it felt good. I lashed out with my foot again. And then again, the noise echoing loudly, satisfying me that I was alive. Alive and angry and goddamned hungry.

  If a shooting pain through the side of my foot hadn’t paused my assault, then I probably wouldn’t have heard the quiet running footsteps pattering away from me. Spinning around, I scanned the surrounding area for any sign or shadow of human life.

  “Hello?”

  I ignored both the creepiness of hearing my voice aloud and the warning voice in my head that advised quiet caution. Who knew what drawing attention to myself would bring out of the silent dwellings that surrounded me?

  “Hello?” I called out louder this time, but there was no answer from the hushed walls and bushes. I waited, breath held, but no figure appeared or called back from their hiding place.

  Still, unlike the vague hint of music on the radio, this was a sound I definitely knew I’d heard, and my spirits lifted. There was someone else out here other than me, and the fact that they were obviously scared of coming too close went in their favour. It certainly pushed up the odds of them being normal, at any rate. Only an insane person wouldn’t be scared; not if they’d been through anything like I had with Chloe and then stepped out into this empty world. Fear was a healthy emotion and I was quickly learning to live with it.

  Feeling buoyed by the almost-contact with another living being, I headed into St. Swythen’s Court, tucked away behind the hairdresser’s and bookshop. There was a little café there, and if I was lucky, maybe I’d be able to get my much-needed breakfast.

  In the sunshine the tiny courtyard was picture postcard perfect, more so for the lack of people cluttering it and distracting from its peaceful charm. The small cobbles sparkled, the smooth stones reflecting the bright natural light as if they were glistening with moisture, and for a moment it could have been early on a perfect summer morning. There were even sparrows singing in the trees around me. They weren’t too bothered about the lack of human company. Perhaps the whole of nature was heaving a sigh of relief at the respite.

  My rumbling stomach threw any more philosophical wanderings out of my mind as I eyed the glass door and chintzy bay window of the small, whitewashed Old World café and smiled. This was going to be easier than Morris’s Menswear; even my inexperienced burglar’s eye could tell that. Unlike that thick plated window, the glass here was thin, and turning my face away I jabbed the pane immediately above the wrought iron handle with my elbow, relishing the sweet tinkling of the glass giving way. Once again, no alarm sounded despite the red box on the wall, and I reached my arm carefully through the gap and released the snib lock. With the gentle ring of the connected brass bell, the door swung open before me. The first hungry customer of the day had arrived.

  Within moments, I’d lifted the wooden flap that served to separate the public from the workforce and found the kitchen, pleased to hear the humming of the fridge creating a sense of normalcy. Yanking the door open, I peered inside and pulled out some eggs and bacon and a loaf of sliced white bread that the management obviously kept in there to keep it fresh longer. I’d started to fill the kettle when I spied the co
ffee machine and grinned. Fresh coffee and a fry-up. I couldn’t think of anything that would satisfy my grumbling appetite more, and if there was a morning for spoiling myself, then this was it.

  Ten minutes later and the dirty pans were soaking in the large stainless steel sink. I sat down at a small round table covered with a chequered cloth, a steaming mug of strong coffee in one hand and a large plate of food in the other. After the second mouthful, my spirits had lifted further and I was almost humming to myself. I should have been tired; in fact, I should have been exhausted, but at that moment I think I was feeling the exhilaration of survival. For a while, my grief was suppressed, part of too big a picture to be real in itself, and all that mattered was that I was alive, that I’d heard the footsteps of another living soul, and that my eggs were perfectly cooked.

  Having devoured my breakfast, scraping the last dregs onto my fork, I took my plate to the kitchen and then leaned against the counter, sipping my second cup of coffee and contemplating where to go and what to do next.

  I was so lost in my own thoughts that at first I didn’t hear the noise. It was almost not there, a furtive invasion, hoping for recognition rather than demanding it. Getting ready to step back out into the world, I’d just decided to make myself sandwiches to take with me when I finally noticed the gentle tapping coming from upstairs. Staring up at the white ceiling, I tilted my head, focussing on the sound; my body once again fully alert. Perhaps it was just the water pipes or the boiler. This building was old and bound to have quirky characteristics.

  The coffee forgotten in my hand, I listened quivering with stillness, my breath short and raspy. There it was again, a rhythmic knocking above my head. It was too regular, too intent to be anything other than man-made. Slowly I put the mug down, ignoring the slight shake in my hand. What was it? Morse code? My heart thumping hard, I moved quietly back through the kitchen and gently opened a door that led into a small, carpeted hallway. A dull blue coat and tatty umbrella hung from a hook on the wall. Beside them, the stairs rose up to what was more than likely the owner’s flat and home. The tapping was louder here.