Breeding Ground

by Sarah Pinborough

  He sighed and nodded. “I guess that’s probably right. But if it’s okay with you, then I’m going to go on pretending my Mary and her boy are just fine and on holiday for a little while longer. Just for a little while longer.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, staring out towards the gate, and I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I wished I could imagine that Chloe was sitting somewhere on a beach in Tenerife looking beautiful in her jade bikini, smiling over her shoulder and blowing me a kiss. My heart ached sitting there in the sunshine, early summer bees buzzing through the flowers in the borders. It ached for me, and it ached for George. He was too intelligent and long in the tooth to be able to fool himself for long.

  We didn’t speak, but grieved silently for our lost worlds and lost loves, strangers thrown together, listening to songs from an era long ago dead as time drifted past us.

  I don’t know how long we sat there, but I was absorbed in my own thoughts when George stood up.

  “Well, well, well, Matthew. We’ve got company.”

  Suddenly back in the present, I was on my feet before I even knew I’d moved, my heart pounding inside my jumper, a smile cracking my face. Three men were walking awkwardly up the side path, glancing at each other occasionally as they approached, their clumsiness suggesting that they were as much strangers to each other as George and I were.

  They certainly didn’t look like friends at any rate. The one who’d taken the lead had to be in his late-thirties or early forties and was wearing an untidy grey suit with a grubby white shirt hanging untucked beneath it. His dark hair was receding, and even from a distance his exposed forehead gleamed with a layer of sweat. Slightly behind him came the other two, a gangly teenager in a baseball cap and a large fifty-something man in a sweatshirt and jeans.

  What they all had in common were the wary expressions on their faces as they got closer, probably similar to that on mine when I had first laid eyes on George just a short while before. Standing tall and strong beside me, somewhat like Gregory Peck in his later years, he looked at me and smiled before waving at our new arrivals.

  “Well, I think we’d better get a fresh pot of coffee on. And pour out a few whiskeys. It seems the world isn’t quite as empty as I first thought.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Our guests had the fine idea of mixing their coffee and alcohol, and we were on our second cup of homemade Irish coffee by the time they were ready to share their stories. George and I had already told ours while calming them down and waiting for the coffeepot to stop bubbling, and we all sat round a table, two on the banquette and three on chairs and stools.

  “It all went really crazy when I got in from work last night.”

  The man in the suit’s name was Nigel Phelps, and even though we were sitting inside, his skin still oozed with fresh sweat. I was glad he’d kept his jacket on. I could only imagine the reeking patches of damp that were probably sticking his shirt to his flesh underneath.

  “I mean, things had been bad before, but I hadn’t really realised how much she’d changed until then. I just thought, well, hoped, that soon she’d get back to normal. I could even have coped with the weight she’d put on, just as long as she was back to being my Mandy again.”

  It was like listening to an echo of my own experience with Chloe, except Nigel hadn’t had pregnancy to blame it on. His eyes flicked around the table as he spoke, not really settling on any one person.

  “I’ve never been very good with dealing with women issues, and when she started, you know, becoming so different . . . well, I just threw myself into my job.” He shrugged, and I thought I saw a slight wobble in his mouth, as if he were biting back tears.

  “That was easy, because there were so many people off sick. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it. I don’t think I’ve been noticing very much these past few weeks.”

  I nodded. “You’re not the only one. I think we’ve all been in the same boat.”

  Sniffing, he gave me a half-smile before his eyes darkened, memories clouding his face.

  “When I get in from work, I normally get changed and maybe go for a quick drink or so and then we have a late dinner, about eight. Yesterday, I didn’t even make it upstairs. She was eating raw bacon, eating it straight from the packet, and when I asked her what the hell she was doing, she spat it at me. And then the next thing I knew, I was on the floor and I couldn’t move. Paralysed.”

  George glanced at me, his mouth set grimly, recognising my own story in the other man’s. Nigel took a shaky mouthful of his fortified coffee, his voice trembling.

  “I was there for hours. All night, stuck to the same spot, not able to move or speak. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. She’d taken to spending a lot of time in our bedroom, just sitting on the bed and staring at nothing, and for most of last night that’s where she was. I just sat there in the dark, wondering if I was going mad.” He paused again. “And then eventually she came back down and sat on the sofa, right in front of me.”

  Tears were flowing down his ruddy face as his voice dropped to a whisper. “She was shaking. Shaking and twisting and turning, and laughing. Somewhere between laughing and crying, anyway. And something was happening inside her . . . blood leaking from her . . . and then . . . and then . . . this, this thing came out of her, this huge white thing, covered in some kind of birthing sack smeared with her blood. It wriggled out of the membrane and unfolded itself. God, it was awful, horrible, like some awful monster spider. . . .” He buried his head in his hands, sobbing freely. “And it had come out of her . . . my Mandy. It had been growing in her all that time. . . . God, I’d been sleeping in bed next to her with that thing growing.”

  I’d had the same thought myself, but tried to ignore it. We waited in silence until he’d composed himself, but it was George that asked the question.

  “How did you get away?”

  Nigel kept his head low, his voice slightly whiney. “For a brief moment after it came out of her, she lost her hold on me and I got up and ran. Ran for my life.” His words were hollow.

  I patted him on the back of the shoulder in support. Not that I thought it was going to really make him any better. I didn’t know what could make things better for any of us. “It might not feel like it now, but you were lucky. We all are, given what we’ve seen today.” I smiled at him. “You must be pretty fit, because when Chloe let me free, I could barely stand, let alone run.”

  His eyes flashed at me, and I could feel him bristling beneath his clothes.

  “Well, that’s how it happened. Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

  His manner turned almost instantly, his voice a snarl. What the hell had got him so defensive? Raising my hands up in front of me in a gesture of surrender, I shook my head. “No, no . . . not at all, I was just trying to say you were lucky to get out. I just keep thinking about that man in the café. That’s all.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Sorry. Sorry. Don’t know what came over me.”

  George refilled his cup. “It’s okay. We’ve all been through a hell of a thing. Tempers are going to be frayed. We’ve just got to keep a check on it.”

  Dave Randall, the older man, leaned back in his chair, shaking his head slowly. “Well, after what I’ve heard from you two,” he nodded at Nigel and then me, “I think I got away lightly. My story’s pretty mundane. I’m not married, never have been. I prefer the bachelor life of golf and beer. It’s less complicated.”

  Unlike Nigel’s had been, his gaze was open and direct.

  “Well, anyway, with no women in my life in any significant way, I didn’t have anything at home to raise any alarm bells, and I run a garage, so my workforce is all male. A couple of them have been having a lot of time off with sickness recently, and it’s been getting so bad that if they hadn’t been married with young families I’d have considered letting them go. I guess that must have been down to all this business.”

  Leaning forward, he rested his arms on the ta
ble.

  “I’d like to say I noticed the changes in women, but I just didn’t. I’m quite shocked, you know. I never realised just how little attention I pay them until now. And I have been having a lot of headaches—I guess that’s been distracting me. I almost went to the doctor last week, that’s how bad they’ve been.” He idly massaged one temple. “I don’t have one today, though. In fact, I woke up feeling fantastic, only to find the world had disappeared. Thank God for your music, George, otherwise Christ only knows what I might have wandered into.”

  He pulled a packet of cigarettes from the back pocket of his jeans and lit one. I’d given up over five years ago and thought I was past the cravings, but it took all my willpower not to grab one myself and suck in the nicotine. Suddenly lung cancer and heart disease didn’t seem like such a threat. I watched him jealously as he smoked and I talked.

  “I think the headaches were caused by the women. I had them, and I know others did, too.” I remembered Matt in Tesco’s and wondered what had become of him this morning before pushing it away. Too much imagination could be a bad thing. “Maybe you were getting them from women around you.”

  He nodded. “Could be. I live in one of those big flats in that converted house down by the river. The one next to me is shared by some young women.” He smiled slightly, but it was a smile haunted by the knowledge of what they must have become.

  “I always wanted them to lure me into their flat and divide me up between them. But I didn’t expect it to be as dinner. Jesus.” The reality of the situation seemed to be dawning on him and he sunk into a reflective silence, mulling it over.

  A delicate hand reached out and dipped into Dave’s cigarettes without asking, the pale fingers slim and long. From beneath the baseball cap, a plume of smoke rose up. I watched the enigmatic young man who’d only spoken one word since his arrival, and that was to give his name.

  “So what about you, John? Do you want to talk about it? You might feel better for it.” I tried not to sound patronising, but it was difficult. He was only eighteen or nineteen and dressed in over-baggy jeans and a The Darkness T-shirt. I couldn’t even guess at what was going through his mind.

  “I’ll tell you. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.” His voice was surprisingly deep and calm. “I had the headaches, too. I live . . . ,” he corrected himself quickly, a tremor hanging in his voice. “I lived with my mum. Just me and her. My dad cleared out years ago. She’s been changing, too. Got fat. Well, she wasn’t exactly thin to start with, but she got fatter. And nastier.”

  He drew hard on the cigarette, pulled his cap off and ran his hand through his short dark hair before replacing it.

  “I killed her three days ago. Hit her over the head with a hammer in the bath. Over and over. She’d left the door unlocked and I went in for a piss and saw her laying there, something moving under her fucking awful stomach, and I knew it couldn’t go on. I couldn’t go on.” He shrugged. “She just wasn’t my mum anymore.” Pausing, he stood up and went to the window overlooking the bowling green. “I haven’t been out since. Just sat in the house not really knowing what to do. I’d pulled the shower curtain round her so I could take a piss and have a wash without having to look. I don’t think I ever intended going out again. Time was moving in a haze. And then I woke up this morning and the TV and phone had gone off. Then I knew I had to go out, just to see what was going on.”

  The rest of us sat dumbstruck, listening to his gentle voice. Jesus, his story was as chilling as mine and Nigel’s. This kid was stronger than I’d first thought. He glanced back at us, and I could see the pain in his face.

  “Nothing came out of her, though. I must have killed that, too. I’m glad about that. I’m really glad about that.”

  Leaving the window, he went behind the bar and pulled out four or five packets of crisps and threw some at our table.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starving.”

  I stared at him a minute before ripping open a packet and crunching on a handful. I’d had a decent breakfast, but my body was ravenous for more food. George refilled his pipe and stepped back out onto the wide porch, and we all followed. Placing the needle back on the record that had been silent for a while, he turned the volume down slightly so we could hear ourselves.

  Leaning on the pretty white wooden railings, Dave contemplated the contents of his bag, chewing slowly.

  “So, what do you think that thing was doing to the man in the café?”

  “I think it was eating him. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was eating him.”

  Pleease . . . help me.

  The memory of his plea itched at me, lodged itself in my conscience, and I was glad when George joined in.

  “Or maybe mating with him. Who knows how much of their original hosts have survived in them? Do they still need us to reproduce?”

  It was a horrible thought, and Dave screwed up his half-eaten crisps. “Or maybe both. Maybe it was mating with him and then eating him, like some kind of black widow spider.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s much more cheerful.”

  Dave peered at the skyline of uneven houses that marked out High Street in the distance. “God, there must be thousands of them out there.”

  John was still in the doorway. “Isn’t it preying mantises that do that? Eat their mates?”

  George ignored the boy’s remark and smiled. “Widows. I like that. I think that’s what I’m going to call them. Widows. What do you think, Matt?”

  “You haven’t seen them. That’s far too human for what they are. And anyway, they’re white. Or near enough.” I shivered at the memory, my stomach clenching.

  “Sometimes you have to give your enemy a human face. It’s makes them less terrifying. And if that thing was eating the man in the flat, then ‘widows’ isn’t that inappropriate, is it?”

  I nodded at the old man. “I’ll take your word for it.” We had to call them something, so if he was taken with that, then I didn’t give enough of a shit to argue the case. And he was right. We couldn’t go on calling them things or spiders. They sure as hell weren’t spiders, not entirely at any rate. They were something new. Something different.

  “What the fuck is that?” Nigel gripped at my arm, staring into the far corner of the bowling green near the gate.

  “What?” I followed his gaze, and sure enough there was a slight quivering in the hedge far down on the left.

  “Do you think it’s one of them? The widows?” The whine was back in his voice and there was something about it that I found unpleasant.

  “No, I don’t. Not unless they’ve taken to wearing clothes.” Leaning forward I could just make out a flash of colour here and there. Whatever was hiding in there it was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Nigel, however, wasn’t taking my word for it and scurried back into the clubhouse behind John’s lanky frame.

  “It’s okay!” I shouted over the music at the brief glimpses of clothes. “We’re all okay! Come out. You’ll be safer with us. I promise we won’t hurt you.”

  A moment of silence passed and then two figures emerged nervously onto the path.

  “Well, I’ll be.” George muttered from behind his pipe, and inside I echoed his sentiment. It was a young woman and a little girl. They approached cautiously as we stared, the woman gripping the girl’s hand.

  Both wore jeans and had their long chestnut curls pulled back into ponytails. As they came up the stairs, the young woman stared at us cautiously, but her eyes seemed to flicker slightly with recognition when she glanced at me and I thought I knew why.

  “Was it you that was following me earlier?”

  She nodded, and I tried not to notice how pretty she was. It didn’t seem right to even think about it, not so soon after Chloe. But still, I found myself staring at her smooth skin and wide eyes just slightly too much, drawn in by the blend of green and hazel that flickered there. She could only have been about twenty-one or twenty-two. I felt a pang of delicate hope. If she were alive, then mayb
e this hadn’t happened to all women. Maybe there were more that were unaffected. Uninfected. The thought was so good it terrified me. I just needed to focus on these two. These two girls and us. There was too much to think about and I was pretty sure that we’d find out what state the world was in before too long.

  George handed her a coffee and she took a sip before speaking.

  “Yes, that was us. We’d come down from Wolverton. The only person we’d seen up there fired an airgun at us and only just missed. He was yelling at us like he hated us.” She frowned slightly. “After that, we weren’t in a hurry to make friends quickly. We almost approached you, but then when I saw you kicking that shop grille, well, you scared us a bit. We couldn’t take the risk.”

  “Yeah, I can see how I must have looked.” I tried my best winning smile on her, but she didn’t look convinced. “Matthew Edge.” I held out my hand and she took it and shook it, which was a start.

  “Katherine . . . Katie Parker. And this is my little sister, Jane.”

  The girl couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve, and she hid slightly behind her sister’s slim body, her wide suspicious eyes peering out at us. She seemed to calm slightly as George held his hand out to introduce himself and it didn’t surprise me. There was something very reassuring about George Leicester that went beyond his age.

  “Well, we’re very pleased to have you among us, Jane.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Why don’t you join us? We’re not really sure what we’re doing yet, but whatever we decide, you’re welcome to come along if you want.” I was eager for their company and I could see George was, too. What would Katie and Jane be to him? A replacement for his lost daughter and grandchildren? Perhaps what they represented to us didn’t really matter. Perhaps the crux of it was that no matter how much we had moaned and complained about them in the past, a world without women seemed like a bleak place to exist in.

  “You lot must be fucking joking!”

  Nigel barged past John and Dave, forcing his way up to us, and Jane recoiled from his outburst.