by Gary McMahon
“Cheers, mate!” Hutch smiles as he snatches the drink from Rick’s hand. He winks at Rick, then shuffles closer to him, the blonde girl in tow. “This is Kath. She’s up from down south for a birthday bash. She seems to have lost her friends.”
“Me and Sally,” says the girl, swaying to whatever song is serving as background to the raised voices in the pub. Rick doesn’t recognise the tune. He isn’t very good with current chart music.
It is then that Rick notices the other girl, the one standing on the other side of the door. She is tall, athletic, and has the most amazing eyes he’s ever seen. Cat eyes: long and narrow and slanted gently upwards.
He smiles. The girl – Sally, is that her name? – smiles coyly back.
Rick raises a hand; she raises hers in return, mirroring the gesture. Something passes between them, some unspoken truth, and his life is changed forever.
Rick and Hutch ditch the other two men, taking the girls to another, quieter pub. They walk along the bustling Quayside, laughing and joking and feeling like they have all the time in the world. Groups of revellers jostle past; football songs fill the air; women squeal their delight at simply being young and alive and in a place where they can follow their desires.
Rick likes the girl, Sally. They get along just fine. As they move along the bank of the river, they automatically hold hands. The four of them climb the stairs to a bar that overlooks the water. They drink cheap cocktails, sling foul-tasting shots down their necks, and touch each other in that tentative yet eager way potential lovers often do.
Hutch and Kath are soon ensconced in a corner, making a knot of their tongues. Rick shakes his head, knowing that Hutch has a girlfriend back at home and this can never be anything serious, anything that might possibly last longer than a single night and maybe the next morning. He glances at Sally, sensing something more between them than a potential one-night stand. He smells liquor and cigarettes, the heat in this bar presses in on him, making him stumble.
“Let’s go outside for some fresh air,” she says, taking his hand.
They walk for a while, then come to a pub doorway. She steps inside, beckons to him. He follows. The place is very small, a haunt for real ale drinkers and those who want a respite from the party-frenzy elsewhere along the Quayside. They drink beer that smells of stale farts and eat pretzels from a china bowl. Their hands touch often; Rick wishes it would go on forever.
“I love this song,” she says, standing up from the stool at the bar and twirling in a slow circle. Her knee-length dress hovers around her thighs, a beautiful centrifuge. She skims across the bare wooden floor, shoulders shrugging in a comical dance move, mimes pulling him towards her with an invisible rope.
Rick is unable to resist. He likes the song, too, but he likes Sally even more. So they slow-dance to Solitary Man, watched by drunken strangers. The pub empties before they even realise the evening is almost over. Still they dance, locked into an act that is so sexually charged the bouncer who comes in from outside is afraid to disturb them.
“Please,” whispers an anxious barman, standing at the edge of their passion, afraid to intrude upon such a rare moment. “I need to go home.”
HE WOKE ON the floor, stretched out beneath the window. At first he could not remember where he was or what had happened, but the memories flooded back in as soon as he opened his eyes. Sally. Where was she?
He looked over at the sofa. She was still there, where he’d left her. The washing line he’d used to tie her arms and legs before he lay down to rest looked vaguely ridiculous; he could never understand why Sally had bought one coloured day-glo green. She’d grinned when she’d unpacked it from the shopping bag, holding it above her head and spinning around on her heels.
“Oh, very nineteen-eighties!” She’d laughed, still spinning. “I couldn’t resist.”
She lay there now, her arms pinned to her sides and her legs laced together, unable to even move. Her head twitched occasionally, rising from the cushions as she attempted vainly to bite through the cotton wool and bandages. There was blood on the side of her head where it had seeped through the dressings. Not much, but enough to cause him concern. He would have to get more bandages before leaving the apartment.
Standing, he opened the blinds and peered out of the window. It was daylight, but drizzle hung in the air, darkening it to a subtle dusk. A burned out car sat on the bank of the canal. Two young boys squatted on the ground. They were slowly tearing pieces off the remains that sat behind the wheel, stuffing the charred flesh into their mouths and chewing idly, staring across the canal like bored kids stuffing their faces in a McDonald’s window seat.
Rick felt the proximity of madness. It leaned in towards him from all corners of the room, throwing its arms around him and sticking its tongue in his ear. His brain flexed, pulsing in response. He closed his eyes and turned away from the window, his hands fumbling with the blinds until they closed.
Bandages. He needed more bandages. Perhaps he’d find some elsewhere in the building, in a neighbour’s place or cleaning cupboard along the landing. It was the first time he’d even considered the other people in the building. He wondered if they had all barricaded themselves inside their apartments, or if any of them had been foolish enough to venture outside.
“I need to get some stuff,” he said, walking towards the sofa. “I won’t be gone long. No one can get inside when I lock the door, and I’ll have the key to let myself back in.”
He was talking to a dead woman. The thought wasn’t as crazy as it might seem. Yes, Sally was gone, deceased, but her body was still present, still capable of movement. He’d never believed in the soul anyway: that was so much religious bullshit. So what if she wasn’t all there. He could pretend that she was simply damaged, a victim of a road accident or a sporting tragedy. If she’d been crippled or brain damaged, he’d still love her just as much and care for her as long as he was physically able. What was so different about this?
She was dead.
Yes, but she still moved and made sounds and tried to do things. Even if those things were frightening and... and wrong.
Dead. She’s dead.
“Shut the fuck up,” he told himself, leaning down to inspect the nylon washing line, checking that the knots would hold while he was away.
“Just a bit of light bondage,” he said. Then he giggled. “We always did have an adventurous sex life, didn’t we baby?” He giggled again, but this time it was shrill and difficult to control.
Sally wriggled under his hands, her cold limbs tensing. A muffled sound came from her throat; a low, soft gurgling that made him feel nauseous.
What if she’s being sick? he thought. What if she chokes?
But she couldn’t choke, not now. She couldn’t choke because she was dead.
Dead.
Dead but here, with him. Always.
“I won’t be gone long.” He caressed the bandaged side of her head with his open palm, feeling the chill through the bindings. “I promise.”
Okay, sweetheart.
So now she was answering him. Great. Just another small step along the insanity highway, and another voice to add to the growing number already taking up residence inside his head.
I’ll miss you.
He stood and went to the door, where he placed his forehead against the frame and tried to clear his mind of all thoughts but the immediate. That was how it had to be now; he could focus only on what lay directly ahead. Everything else would have to be relegated to the back of his mind, where he could smother it in shadow.
If he accepted that his dead wife was sitting upright on the sofa, her head wrapped up in bandages, then he also had to embrace the fact that she was somehow speaking to him. Simple leaps of logic: but not any kind of logic that had even existed in the old world, before these dramatic changes had occurred.
A strange ringing sound filled his ears, building from somewhere deep inside his skull. At first he thought it was a siren, perhaps an ambulance passing by o
ut on the road, but after a few seconds he realised that it was simply the bright-breaking sound of insanity.
“Go away,” he muttered. “Leave us in peace.”
The sound intensified, building towards a crescendo, and then abruptly ceased. His ears felt numb, as if he’d taken a blow to the head. Was that it? Was he now officially mad?
He reached down and unlocked the door, peering around into the empty corridor. He craned his neck and looked both ways along the landing. There was blood on a closed door further along, on the opposite side of the corridor: a small red handprint near the tarnished brass handle. Rick paused and listened, but he could make out no sounds out there. Whoever had left that bloody print was either long gone or shut up inside the apartment.
His hand was moist as it gripped the door handle. His fingers ached. He pulled the door inwards, moving his body to the side so that he could step around it and onto the landing. Nothing moved out there. One of the ceiling lights began to flicker, casting long shadows near the floor. He held his breath so that he could hear even the slightest sound, but none came to his ears.
Rick took out the Glock and held it with both hands wrapped around the butt. He licked his lips and stepped out into the corridor. Moving slowly, he began to head towards the stairs. He wasn’t quite sure where to look for more bandages, but he figured he had to find them somewhere. In one of these rooms, on one of these floors, he was sure that there would be some sort of medical kit.
Just as he drew level with the door with the bloody handprint, he heard a slight sound, like the scuff of a heel or a gentle rapping of knuckles. He stopped, turned slowly, being careful not to make a sound himself. He backed up, the gun pointed at the door, until his back hit the wall behind him. Then he took a single step forward, away from the wall, just to create some space to manoeuvre.
The sound came again, louder this time. It was a footstep; it had to be.
There was someone on the other side of that door, and judging by the smudged blood they’d been injured – which meant that they were probably dead… or worse.
He raised the pistol, levelling it at where he guessed was around head height on an average male. He blew air out through his lips, deflating his lungs, and then held his breath. His finger tightened on the trigger, stroking rather than squeezing it at such close range... Blam! Blam! Blam! Three rapid shots, each one a killer.
He listened for the sound of a body slumping to the floor, but wasn’t sure if the sound he did hear was anything of the sort. It could have been scuffling feet, or a heavy object being dropped onto the floor.
He put two more shots through the door, the second one blowing away the lock and handle. The door swung open a couple of inches. No light bled through the gap, only darkness, and the promise of horror.
Rick stepped forward, tensed and ready for either fight or flight. His training had kicked in and he was incredibly alert: his senses opened up, taking in every tiny detail. He felt the slight breeze from an air vent above his head, heard the sighing of air through the grille; saw the shadow of a dead moth through the plastic light fitting that encased the flickering bulb; tasted cordite from the gunshots; heard the hushed sound of someone’s hand as it brushed against the inside of the door through which he’d just shot.
He was already letting off another round when the door swung open, but it was aimed too high. A small, thin child charged out of the apartment, his face twisted into a mask of rage and hunger and something so alien and ugly that it was completely unreadable.
The short body hit Rick at waist level, shoving him back against the wall. The kid was growling like a wildcat, white froth frosting his teeth and lips. Instinctively, Rick brought the gun down on the boy’s head, delivering a glancing blow to the nape of the neck. The boy’s feet slipped on the tiled floor and they both went down, with Rick on top. The boy’s jaws snapped at Rick’s face; cold spittle flecked his cheeks, getting in his eyes.
He groped for the boy’s chin, grabbed it, and managed to push his head sideways, into the floor. The boy’s flailing hand had grabbed the gun, and Rick wrestled with him to release it. He heard the kid’s neck crack, felt his head swing loosely on the smashed vertebrae. The kid’s jaws still clamped down, snatching at Rick’s fingers as they slid from his chin.
“Fucker!” Rick brought up a knee and slammed it hard into the boy’s chest. More bones fractured. There was a sickening crack as Rick’s knee sunk down into the yielding torso, breaking right through the ribcage.
“Fucker!”
He wrenched his gun hand free, dropped it and shoved the barrel of the Glock as hard as he could against the kid’s eye. It sunk into the aqueous matter up to the trigger guard. Rick pulled the trigger without even pausing to think about what he was doing. The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, and left a ringing sound in his ears.
He was unable to look down at the boy as he climbed off the body. He could barely see through the tears as he turned away, rubbing his hands clean on his already-stained stab vest.
Stumbling, he moved to the apartment door and kicked it open. The hallway beyond was dark, with dust motes slow-dancing in the air. He moved along the hall with the gun held out front, still focused despite the horror he’d just endured. He’d process all that later, when he could afford the luxury of trying to piece together what remained of his mind.
He found two bodies – or what was left of them – in the living room. Thankfully the curtains were closed, so he could see little of what had been done to them. A hand sat in a plant pot on an occasional table; the bloody wrist looked like it had been gnawed. The lower half of a leg was propped up against the television. The upper half of a face had been pressed against the wall, where it had adhered to the wallpaper like a nightmarish example of modern art, something dreamed up by a dead Damien Hirst.
Once again Rick felt laughter building up inside him. He bit down on it, aware that to release it would mark the start of something he did not have the strength to stop.
Rick went through the kitchen cupboards and found a large box filled with professional medical supplies. There were plenty of fresh, clean bandages, and even a couple of hypodermic syringes. He filled a pillow case from the bedroom with canned food and bottled water, and at the back of the fridge he found some glass vials marked as containing Morphine. He knew a doctor lived on this floor, but had never been sure which apartment.
He kept his head turned away from what he guessed must be the nursery – the open door was decorated with childish stickers and a plaque bearing the words: baby’s room. There was blood on the doorframe, and from the corner of his eye he could see a small red lump on the floor, its edges oddly flattened out across the laminated timber boards.
He put the morphine in his pocket and left the apartment. The kid’s body was still there, where he’d left it. He put down the food and the bandages and grabbed hold of the kid’s legs, dragging the corpse through the doorway and into the entrance passage. The head flopped freely, almost coming off altogether as he manhandled the body a few yards along the hallway, away from the door.
He gently closed the door, picked up his haul, and returned to his dead wife, blanking it all out, swallowing down the pain and the anguish and the hatred he felt for all of humanity.
FINALLY THEY MANAGE to prise themselves apart, blinking like sleepers woken from a wonderful dream. Rick feels that something has been lost forever, but there is also the promise of so much more; a hopeful sense that the future has just opened up before him, and Sally is part of it, an essential element in all the days to come.
Electricity sparks between them. The earth begins to alter its axis and slowly rotate around the point where they stand. The universe halts, making them its centre.
They are standing at the crux of something exquisite, an experience neither of them will ever recover from. The barman turns off the jukebox and they leave the pub, hand in hand, fused forever. That night is their first, and like all first nights it is imperfect – but i
t is at least the start of something perfect, and even then, at such an early stage, they both know it and cling to it and appreciate its worth.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DARYL STOOD NAKED before the mirror, the washed and scrubbed pieces of Sally Nutman’s face stuck with glue to his forehead and cheeks. He stared at the absurd partial mask, as yet unmoved. His penis was semi erect, twitching occasionally as he tried to focus his thoughts. He’d tried to masturbate, but could not sustain the energy required for completion. Sally’s name was scrawled across his thin, hairless chest in thick black marker pen. His wiry arms were rigid – unlike his dick – and he was straining against something unseen.
It wasn’t working. Nothing he tried made him feel any better, or any closer to the truth that he sought. This simply wasn’t him, his identity. Perhaps if he tried something else, like a shopper trying on coats in a tailor’s shop, he could pick the right direction for his desires.
He flicked and picked the meat from his face and turned away from the mirror, feeling foolish, as if he’d been observed in this undignified act. His skin was sticky with glue, the areas where he’d applied the solution beginning to itch.
The room was gloomy. Not much light could get through the narrow boards he’d hastily nailed across the windows. The back and front doors were protected, too. It had taken him ages to remove some internal doors to nail across the main ones. The back door was blocked permanently, but he’d managed to fashion something over the front door that acted like a medieval bar across a castle entrance. If he needed to get out of the house quickly, he could simply lift it and flee the premises.
Daryl went into the kitchen and glanced towards the cooker. Perhaps if he cooked the remains of Sally’s face? Cannibalism might be his thing, if only he tried it. Would it be better pan fried or roasted in the oven like strips of chicken?
