Hungry Hearts

by Gary McMahon

  Rohmer remained stoically behind the wheel of his vessel. He had not said much since mentioning God, and Rick thought that the man was sinking into his own inner landscape, searching for that very God to send him a sign. Perhaps he was even thinking about his wife, or his former lover – the man on the island. Now there, thought Rick, was a strange and tangled situation…

  Then, as they approached a lock, Rohmer broke the silence: “I’m starting to think that it might not be such a bad thing to die. I mean, to die properly, not come back as one of those things. The world is dying, and what’s left behind will be unbearable.” He slowed the boat to a crawl, and then turned to face Rick. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you, son? What I’m asking.”

  Rick swallowed. His throat felt constricted. “Don’t worry. If it comes to that, I have more than enough ammo to make sure the three of us don’t come back.”

  Satisfied, Rohmer nodded once, and then returned his attention to the looming lock. “You stay on board and I’ll see to getting us through. You’re better with the gun, and I can turn one of these things quicker than you ever could.” He grinned, winked, and eased the boat towards the waiting gate, his hands firm on the wheel.

  “Come on, grab the wheel.”

  Rick went to the front and took up his position, one hand steering the barge and the other releasing the Glock from its holster. The gun felt more natural than the wheel.

  Rohmer leaped from the barge and opened the lock gates, then walked quickly up the incline to the lock gear. Rick watched him closely, ready to start shooting at the slightest provocation.

  The two stone walls encompassed the craft as it entered the tunnel, and Rick began to feel on edge. It was fine when they were in motion, but this close to dry land they could be asking for trouble.

  Rohmer worked the rack and pinion and released the gears, allowing water to be forced into the area where the barge now sat. The vessel rose slowly, buoyed on the surging waters. It took five long minutes for the lock to be filled, and finally Rohmer released the top gate so that Rick could guide the barge to the upper level of the canal.

  It all went smoothly until Rick saw the pike.

  The fish was trapped in the lock, and had risen to the surface because of the water level being disturbed. It nudged the side of the barge, blindly looking for a way around the vessel. Rick watched it, slightly puzzled. He was anxious, but had nothing upon which to focus his bad feelings.

  “Nearly done,” Rohmer shouted from above. The water level was almost right; Rick’s hands tensed on the wheel.

  As if in a dream, a fat white hand broke the surface and grabbed the angry pike from below, pulling its long sleek form swiftly beneath the restless waters of the lock.

  Rick aimed the pistol at the spot where the fish had been, trying to keep his breathing shallow. Concentric circles painted the surface. His hands shook with tension. Something clattered gently, gently, three times so gently, on the underside of the hull.

  Rick tensed, watching and listening. The sound was not repeated.

  “Guide her through!” Rohmer was oblivious to what had just happened.

  Slowly, Rick returned his attention to the lock and eased the boat through the gate. The balance beam across the top of the metal gate clanked loudly, the sound dull and somehow even more frightening than what he’d just glimpsed in the water.

  Rick watched closely as Rohmer closed the gates and made his way back to the barge. He saw nothing this time – certainly nothing that resembled white, pulpy flesh – emerging from the water inside the lock. Whatever was resting there, rested for now still and easy. But the incident had changed the entire complexion of the journey for Rick. Now he realised that he’d been foolish to drop his guard and relax, even for a moment.

  Even when danger was out of sight, it remained a constant reminder of the fragility of human existence. One false move, a single moment of distraction from any one of them, might cost them all their lives.

  He stepped back and allowed Rohmer to take control of the Queen Anne. Only when it was back in the middle of the canal did he begin to feel less anxious. The memory of the white hand claiming the pike felt like a brief warning of worse things to come.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SLOW RHYTHM SOUNDS motion hungry dark throb muted pain lurch hungry voice language girl child smell food hungry lapping swell hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry girl hungry hungry hungry hungry child hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry hungryhungryhungryhungryhungryhungryhungryhungry

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  DARYL HAD NO idea what they were doing down by the canal. After leaving the temporary shelter provided by the public house, he’d simply allowed the moped to carry him wherever it may. Rattling along empty streets, turning a corner at any junction where he suspected that trouble might lurk up ahead, he had enjoyed the sensation of the vehicle under his body. Claire’s arms around his waist had been a novelty, and for a wonderful moment he felt halfway normal.

  Whatever that word ‘normal’ actually meant.

  He heard the gunshots first: short little barks from what sounded like a toy gun. They went on for a little while, and then stopped abruptly.

  “What is it?” Claire rested her chin on his shoulder, her cheek pressed against the side of his neck.

  “What does it sound like?” He was rapidly losing patience with her idiot questions.

  “Gun.”

  “Clever girl. Now let’s see if you can spell that.”

  “Fuck off.” She pulled back from him, her arms unloosening the knot they’d made around his middle. A sigh escaped her lips; the air against his face felt stale and odorous. He held his breath.

  “I vote that we head away from the gunshots. We don’t want to run into any of those things.”

  He sensed rather than saw her nod in agreement. Her hands returned – lightly – to his waist, the touch almost cautious. Daryl released the throttle quickly, causing the moped to jerk forward slightly. Claire’s grip tightened abruptly, and he grinned, feeling the liquor of his power over her as it coursed through his system.

  He guided the moped along the track through the trees, keeping his speed down so as not to upend them and damage the machine. The last thing he needed now was damage that he did not possess the knowledge to repair.

  The sun was rising slowly; its light was feeble, a mere flicker of brightness against the charcoal sky. Again he felt like he was stuck in a monochrome movie, and as usual the thought pleased him.

  “Look.” Claire pressed against him, drawing close in a sudden burst of terror.

  He slowed the moped, placing one foot down on the stony track and dragging it along to cut a swathe through the dusty, uneven surface.

  Two figures ran out of the trees a few hundred yards up ahead. They did not look Daryl’s way, and in fact failed to even notice the moped and its gawping riders. The couple ran, hand in hand, into the bushes on the other side of the track. The woman was repeating something over and over, but Daryl could not quite hear what it was. A word? A name? Perhaps it was even a number. Just one more thing he would never know...

  Turning his head to the left, Daryl caught sight of the canal glinting darkly through the trees. He stared, trying to make out what he thought he saw... an object on the water, heading along on the tide. A long barge, with a couple of figures standing on deck, both of them staring in the direction of the bank, probably at the retreating figures who’d passed only moments before.

  Daryl experienced a temporal shift: reality seemed to bend, curling in on itself and meeting at both ends like a Möbius strip. He had the sensation of watching himself watch himself, as if he stood in an endless hall of mirrors. Then, just as quickly as it had occurred, the weird sensation passed, leaving his head spinning with a combination of vertigo and a strange giddy nostalgia for something he could not name.

  “Are you okay?”

  God, he wished that stupid bitch would just shut the fuck up and allow him to enjoy his little ep
iphany, whatever the hell it meant. The closeness he’d felt towards her back at the bar, when he had been afforded a glimpse into the darkness at her core, was now forgotten. He could barely believe that he’d felt anything other than disdain for this ridiculous puppet.

  “No.” He eased the moped forward, sending it rolling onto the rough ground at the side of the track. Then, parking it up, he climbed off and began to walk down the embankment towards the towpath that ran below.

  “Wait. Daryl, wait for me!”

  He kept on going, hoping that she’d trip and fall, maybe break her leg so that he could leave her there to become food for passing dead folk.

  The thought made him smile, easing the frustration.

  “Wait. I’m coming, too.” Her rapid motion sent small, loose stones tumbling down the incline. It was lucky for her that the barge was too far away for the crew to hear the commotion; otherwise he might be forced to silence her.

  A distant gunshot, or perhaps the sound of a car backfiring, drew his attention away from the canal. He stared back, over Claire’s shoulder, but could see no one in the vicinity. Listening intently, he picked up no incongruous sounds other than the ones made by the silly girl as she clumsily descended the embankment. A dog began to bark and howl, but it was not close by; after a few seconds the anxious baying ceased.

  Daryl turned back towards the canal, his attention drawn to the boat like iron filings to a magnet. He was not sure what the pull was, but he was unable to ignore it. Something about the figures on deck – at least one of them – seemed familiar and important. The way he stood, moved; the shape of his body. Like an echo from a dream he’d once had but could no longer fully recall.

  He trod carefully the rest of the way down the cluttered embankment, his feet sinking into the debris, dead leaves and fallen branches at the base of the incline. Litter was everywhere; a tawdry second skin over the earth.

  He stopped behind the last line of trees, their November branches already shedding to adopt winter’s skeletal nudity. Pressing himself against one of the wider trunks, he watched as the barge chuntered lazily towards a distant stone footbridge.

  Finally he realised why he’d been so drawn to the vessel. The old man piloting the craft he did not recognise, but there was no doubt in Daryl’s mind that other man – the younger of the two – was the policeman: Sally Nutman’s husband. Daryl watched as the man stood and stretched, scanning the towpath with a pistol in his hand.

  “Well, well, well…”

  Claire finally reached his side. She was panting, struggling for breath, and Daryl manhandled her as he grabbed the torn pink rucksack she wore on her back. He pulled the flap open and removed the binoculars from inside. Putting them to his eyes, he focused on the policeman. Oh, it was him all right; there could be no mistake. He zoomed in on the man’s face. His mouth was a tight line; his eyes were narrowed; his cheeks were dark and sunken, shaded by thick stubble. He looked… hard. Hard as nails.

  Daryl would have to be careful with this one.

  He watched the barge until the policeman’s face was out of eyesight. Then he took away the binoculars and watched it still, hoping that Sally, sweet dead Sally, would emerge from the space below deck – what was it called, the galley, the hold? Something like that.

  She did not appear.

  The two men chatted while Rick checked his pistol, running his hands over the weapon in a way that seemed almost loving. Then, eventually, Daryl decided that he had seen enough.

  Was this luck or fate? He had known all along that he would run into Sally again; it was a certainty. He had not once questioned this eventuality, simply accepted it as a fact of this strange new life. But for it to happen so soon, and when he least expected it, was wonderful; a gift; a favour. It was almost enough to make him believe in Mother’s God. Almost… but not quite.

  “I need to go,” said Claire, shuffling her feet in the loamy earth.

  “Go where?”

  “Go. You know. The toilet.” She rolled her eyes, and he imagined popping them out of their sockets and rolling them across a flat surface – a tabletop, or perhaps a smooth stretch of footpath.

  “Oh. Yes. I suppose you’d better go over there, in the bushes. I’ll make sure no one sees.” He smiled.

  “Very funny,” she said, drifting off toward a dense little stand of trees that were surrounded by waist-high foliage.

  Daryl watched as she pulled down her jeans and knickers in a single swift movement (oh, she was used to that manoeuvre, if her father was to be believed), and squatted, her pale backside swamped by the almost leafless yet still thick undergrowth. She stared at him, and when he did not look away she averted her gaze, cheeks and throat flushing red.

  Daryl watched her straining to urinate. It was the first time he’d ever seen anyone but Mother do their toilet, and he was fascinated at the way her thighs tensed and her hands gripped the belt-band of her trousers.

  “Holy fuck!” She tried to run while still in a crouch, her legs tangled with her clothing. Her feet slipped on the knotty ground, and she went tumbling forward, rolling a little way down the incline. Her buttocks were dirty and as she rolled he saw that her pubic hair glistened, like the pelt of an unwashed dog. He felt suddenly nauseous.

  “Get the fuck away. Fuck, fuck!” She struggled to get to her feet, all the while tugging up her garments, and as she buckled her belt and zippered the front of her jeans, Daryl stepped towards the spot where she’d been urinating.

  “What is it?” he said, gaze fixed on the ground, then flicking upward and taking in the damp, dense foliage.

  “In there,” she said, breathless. She was pointing directly into the undergrowth, right behind where she had squatted only seconds before. “It’s in there…”

  Daryl inched forward, his hand straying to the kitchen knife he now kept tucked into the back of his pants, wrapped in a ragged square of chamois leather to prevent the blade from slicing his flesh. Then, when he saw what Claire was making so much fuss about, he had to restrain himself from laughing out loud. He doubted that she – or anyone else for that matter – would see the humour in such a gruesome sight.

  The remains – for that was surely what they were – consisted of male body parts. The torso had been pummelled and stripped clean, the offal removed. Ribs were broken, sticking out of the compressed mass like white spiderlegs from a mutated arachnid. Various innards had been left behind, but Daryl was unable to identify them: a gristly chunk of what might have once been part of a heart; bloodless strings of arteries; a few sausage-like sections of intestine attached to a rubberised section of bowel. The rest was just so much red gunge.

  He stared at the thing, truly amazed at the baffling sight.

  Its head was relatively intact; the throat had been peeled back, exposing its inner workings, cheeks stripped away like wads of paper, half a nose with one wide nostril left to gape.

  But the eyes... they were a lovely shade of cornflower blue, heavy-lidded, and blinking.

  Blinking.

  Somehow, against nature, what was left of the corpse had returned to a travesty of life, and even now its shattered jaw snapped shut on a flap of its own shredded flesh. The limbs were bent and folded; the whole stunted cadaver was collapsed in on itself, forming a tight knot of living-dead matter. And it was steadily eating what little meat remained on its own bones.

  Daryl watched in silence as the jagged teeth tore free a large slab of flesh, chewing it; as the meat was swallowed; as it journeyed down into the exposed stomach cavity to plop onto the long grass, completely undigested.

  The thing did not even know what it was doing. Brute instinct had taken over, the desire to feed... no, not feed: the desire to eat. There was no sustenance being gained here. This was simply eating for the sake of it, like a morbidly obese patient hiding cold burgers under his hospital bed, or a greedy child forcing down sugared donuts even as he vomits them back up.

  “Fascinating,” he said, unmoved yet interested on an academ
ic level. Even if there was nothing left in which to store food, these things ate. If you dissected one of them, vivisecting it to the bone, reducing it to nothing but a mouth attached to a brain, would it still try to consume?

  It was an interesting theory, and one that he would love to test if ever he had the necessary time and privacy.

  Maybe it was even something he could try out on Sally, a way of discovering exactly how much he loved her.

  Instead of putting an end to her living death (or should that be her dead life?), perhaps he could kidnap her and use her as a test subject. If the policeman had her with him, on the boat with others, she was obviously under some kind of strict control – he must have used medication, rendering her placid.

  The possibilities of love, he was beginning to realise, were endless.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  IT SEEMED LIKE months had passed since they’d been on the canal, and yet Rick didn’t want the journey to end.

  “It’s just over here,” said Rohmer, easing the barge towards a short bank overgrown with ferns and hanging flora. Their leaves kissed the water, causing tiny ripples to disturb the stillness beneath the gravel towpath.

  Rotting timber boards made up most of the old jetty. It looked unsafe, but Rohmer promised them that it was fit to walk on. “It never gets used,” he’d said. “Except by me. There’s nothing near here but my cottage.”

  The barge drifted inward, cutting a calm line through the water. Rick had brought up the M16 from below. Rohmer kept the second Glock pistol close to hand.

  The heavily thatched roof of a thick-walled stone cottage rose suddenly into his eye line. It sat on a rise, which made it easier to defend if it came to that, and Rick guessed that the cottage probably lay a few hundred yards from the bank.

  “I think your wife is trying to get up.” Tabby’s head popped up from below. Her eyes were startled, too wide, like those of a shocked cartoon character.