by Stevens, GJ
Turning when she hadn’t arrived in the room, I found her leaning on the door frame, a white towel hanging from her armpits to halfway down her thighs. Hair wrapped in another towel, her eyes narrowed as she stared back with a sweet smile, teeth digging into her bottom lip. The smile rose as I took a step. Toni pulled in a breath and walked past me, only turning as she arrived beside the bed.
“You should get something else to eat,” she said, shaking the towel loose from her head and rubbing it against her hair with her hand. “You’re losing weight.”
I tried to push away the comment. I tried not to analyse her intent. Had she changed her mind? Was I imperfect for her in another way?
No. I told myself those days were gone, reminding myself she had no control over me as I watched whilst she continued to dry her hair with her gaze on me, but only for a moment. She turned away, pulling the larger towel tight around her upper body.
Lingering again, I shook away my thoughts and meandered down the stairs, staring out of the window as I arrived at the ground floor. It wasn’t until I noticed the bucket and sponge by the front door I turned back through the window and saw the van white again. By the bucket stood a pair of red heels, my size. I could tell without having to look inside.
She was a four, I was a five. I was bigger in all but one way. They must have been mine. I was sure until a thought crept in; they could have belonged to someone else.
Without time for my mind to ask questions I didn’t want to answer, my stomach urged me back to the fridge and, flicking on the TV as I passed, I made another two sandwiches, setting one aside.
There was no rolling news, no stories breaking through the seasonal films. The scoop was still mine to break. For now.
Just in that moment I remembered the phone, cursing that she’d managed to distract me.
I looked below the TV to the empty cradle, its light no longer blinking. Before I could survey the room for the handset, I heard her feet on the stairs.
“What day is it?” I said.
“New Year’s Eve,” she replied, with no smile in her voice and none on her face as she landed at the bottom in jeans and a t-shirt. “You found the shoes.”
I turned to see her looking down to my feet, shaking her head as I offered out the sandwich on a plate.
“Mine?” I said without thought, my heart pounding in my ears as the words slipped out.
Her smile went wide, her teeth glistening as they bared, her face alight with joy at my question. She nodded, turning away, only coming back as the smile faded to a shadow in the corners of her lips.
I had to wait, not wanting the relief to show in my voice and ate the other sandwich, controlling my movements with each bite.
“I’m a little over dressed,” I said with a smile, hoping and not she’d tell me to take the clothes off.
“You want to film this, right?” she snapped.
I nodded, turning back towards the kitchen. The remains of her smile flattened.
“What now?” I said, looking away, my mind drifting back through the months. We could never bear to be apart for so long, couldn’t have been naked so close without having to spend the next hour scratching each other’s itch.
Warmth filled my cheeks as I tried to push away the thoughts, but her cold, strict tone did the job for me.
“There’s another facility on the edge of Dartmoor. A place called Willsworthy. You know it?”
I shook my head, remembering how it always changed.
“I’ll need some trainers as well,” I said, my voice flattening out.
A phone call, either mine or hers, and it was like something snapped. A fight would start. I’d take the blame, but they were mostly her fault. Maybe she would say the same, but she’d be wrong. I could feel the warmth inside me turning cold, my stare following as she went around the tiny room squaring the place up. We had to get out of here before the inevitable.
“Are we going or what?” I said, heading to the front door.
“You’re ready now, right?” she replied, and I pulled it open, letting the cold breeze wash away the building anger as the door slammed at my back to leave her searching a cupboard.
***
I drove the empty side road in the trainers Toni had found. We’d agreed in a few short words we’d avoid the motorway like the plague, both of us regretting the phrase if the silence was anything to go by.
Passing each closed up shopfront, Toni's frustration grew, claiming she couldn’t get the supplies she wouldn’t disclose and for which I wouldn’t indulge her by probing further.
Only a handful of the shops bothered with a sign telling people who’d dared to brave the chemical leak it was the reason for closure. After travelling half the distance we’d covered escaping on the motorway, Toni’s sharp phrase called for me to stop at a petrol station on our left.
With pumps which hadn’t seen a new coat of paint since the seventies, to the side of the forecourt stood a building you could barely call a shed.
For a fleeting moment I ignored her call; it was time for her attitude to stop, but my will relented as her head turned my way with a scowl and I pulled the van under the shallow canopy.
“Wait here,” she said, already slamming the van door against my protests and heading towards the thick padlock hanging just below the petrol station’s iron door handle.
My heart raced as I watched out of the passenger window, gaze fixed on the screwdriver she’d drawn from her pocket. The door soon levered open as the padlock clattered to the floor and I fought the compulsion to pull out the camera and attempt to film the robbery in progress.
As I sat, simmering, glancing around and about, checking the glove box for my mobile phone, my attention snapped to a tap at my window, jumping in my seat at the sight of a policeman in a fluorescent yellow jacket.
His hand slapped at the glass. Fingers stripped of flesh left a trail of thick blood as it returned to take a second hit.
With my lungs failing to muster air for the scream, I stared, fixed on his vacant white eyes as his low growl vibrated through the glass.
35
I recognised his face from before. It was once the policeman who’d moved his car first as we’d raced away from the soldiers’ last stand.
How long had that been? An hour, if that.
Missing from his great bald head, half his scalp hung down the side of his face and slapped his cheek each time he moved. A flaking scarlet crust blanketed the left side of his yellow jacket.
I jumped again as his teeth bared, the whites of his snarl smacking into the window. A tooth fell to the ground and a dark gap stared back as he glared with his mouth wide.
I stared on, transfixed, wishing I had a gun filled with rounds to make the problem go away. I felt around the cab, searching for something sharp or heavy.
My attention drew away with a ring of bells rushing from the hut. I turned to where Toni had broken in, the policeman’s movement following mine.
My heart sunk at his slow walk towards the door still open wide.
There was no sign of Toni.
I had to do something. I had to warn her at least.
I jumped between the seats, my head spinning as it hit hard against the roof.
Gripping the upholstery hard, I steadied myself, wasting a precious moment for my view to settle. With the spin almost gone, I searched in the back, grabbing a tripod, but it was too heavy to wield. I had no choice and let it drop to the floor, leaping to the side at the last moment so it wouldn’t hit my feet.
For a moment my hand hovered on the handle of the rear door, then I jumped back in the front seat.
In the time I’d wasted in the back, the policeman had made up the distance and was a few steps away from the source of the penetrating alarm.
Jabbing my foot on the accelerator, I pushed down the clutch, selecting first gear, forcing the van to lurch forward and hit the fluorescent jacket, sending it disappearing to crunch under the wheel. The tyre slipped and I winced at the s
ound, trying not to think on what the scene under the van would look like when eventually I rocked to a stop.
With my arms locked out straight to stop me hitting against the steering wheel, the passenger door slammed closed with the force.
Toni, her hands weighed down with carrier bags, appeared at the garage door and looked down at the front corner of the van and to the ground below, raising her eyebrows before looking around.
Movement caught my eye. Staring out, I saw a second policeman coming around the corner. He was missing his fluorescent coat and the left sleeve of his white shirt ran with dark scarlet, leaving a syrupy flow in its wake with his eyes fixed in Toni’s direction.
I let the horn sing, drawing the creature’s attention.
Toni took one look before running to the van and pulling the door wide to jump in.
“Go,” she shouted, slamming the metal closed as she placed the huddle of shopping bags in the footwell.
“Go,” she repeated, just as a high voice electrified the air.
Together we turned to see a young woman standing in a thick winter coat, her gloved hand at her face, having come around the opposite corner of the building. She stared at the mess on the ground with her mouth wide as her gaze caught the horror of the policeman who’d turned to check out the piercing noise.
“Leave her,” Toni shouted with a force and anger that tugged a memory.
I heard the echo of Toni’s screamed accusations as I shrunk back. I listened to my voice through the tears I’d shed and winced at the words I’d sprayed back, remembering the silence as I stormed to my car, barely able to see the road through my anger, my sorrow for another terrible ending; not able to look her in the face as she pleaded through the window for me to come inside so she could make up.
That was the last time I’d seen her. The one-sided conversation I’d calmly spoken down the phone was the last time I’d given her my energy.
I caught the muscles in Toni’s face relax just before I turned away with my foot burying the accelerator deep, but saw her hands hurrying on her seatbelt whilst she watched wide-eyed as I turned the wheel not towards the free space and the exit, but to the infected creature whose aim centred solely on the woman standing out in the cold.
“What…?” Toni snapped, her words cutting off at the impact sending her chest into the belt tight across her front and pushing the policeman’s hijacked body out of our view.
I ignored her curses, instead turning the wheel, twisting to move the van so my door was alongside the woman who stared with her mouth hanging open and the blood draining from her face.
“Get in,” I said, nodding to the back, but she gawked on like I’d just killed someone.
Shouldering the van door open, ignoring Toni’s protests, I jumped to the tarmac and held my hands out as the woman stepped back.
“He’s not human,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” Toni shouted from the passenger seat as she leant forward, her face going beetroot red as I slammed the door shut to deaden her sound.
I stepped forward, stooping to catch the stranger’s eye as she stood frozen on the spot.
“Do you recognise me?” I said. Watching, I saw her flinch from the ground to look me in the eye. She drew back and I took a step away. Her eyebrows raised and a slow nod rocked her head.
“Then come with us. We need to get away.”
She didn’t reply, but let me lead her to the back door. Let me help her up the back step to sit on the chair in the rear.
“What are you doing?” Toni snapped as I jumped back in the front, already manoeuvring the wheels to get us back on the narrow road. “You’re letting her out just up ahead,” she said when I didn’t reply other than to shake my head.
“Jessica,” she snapped. “Stop the van.”
“Where do you get off ordering me around?” I said, my voice surging out from my throat unbidden.
Silence filled the air. I felt sick, my heart pounding at the realisation of what I’d just said, my grip around the wheel tensing, foot hovering with indecision over the brake in anticipation of what Toni would do next. When she didn’t reply, stunned to silence perhaps, I spoke again in a voice I tried to keep calm.
“I’m not going to have sex with her, but if I wanted to then it has nothing to do with you.”
There. I’d said it, but I didn’t feel better. I’d said the words I’d wanted to all along, to a fashion. Still the nausea rose, threatening to overflow in the silence as I tried to push away the fears roving around in my head.
Toni was driven. Passionate for life. For her field. For science. For me.
She was empathic to a fault. She knew what was going on inside my head, unless the green mist descended. She was caring, brave, honest, but jealous. Toni wanted me all for herself and I was ready to give her what she craved, but only if she could shake off her cross.
It took me a long time to understand that she couldn’t or wouldn’t change.
Only on her own could she get past the mistrust. I’d never given her any reason to think I wasn’t hers. I’d never cheated. Never looked elsewhere while we were together, not that we’d ever been an item for very long. Despite my protests, a phone call, a text message, a look across the room from someone else would be enough for her to think I’d been with everyone else in the world when I wasn’t laying in her bed.
I’d leave and we wouldn’t speak, until the memories wore thin enough for one of us, usually me, to pick up the phone. We’d talk for hours, slow at first, building it all back from scratch without ever mentioning why I’d run from her bed.
Despite our time apart, she was always there, in the back of my head, in my thoughts every hour that passed. Over the years the arguments came after a shorter time of being in each other’s company and I was getting used to having to defend myself with shouted words. I knew I had to stay away from her, have a long break before one of us took it to the next stage.
Toni’s barely heard voice cut through my thoughts.
“You were always so weak.”
I shivered at the words and knew again in that moment that the decision I’d made months ago had been the right one.
A scream from the back of the van snapped me from my thoughts and we flinched around to see the woman in the back, her mouth wide in terror as she shook. In her hands gripped the empty pistol she must have found on the side, her aim alternating between our faces.
I turned around as I felt the uneven road, twisting the steering wheel to pull us from the grass verge. Looking up I saw the flash of blue lights ahead coming over a hill in the distance.
“Toni,” I shouted over the piercing noise.
“Shut up,” she called out to the sight of olive drab lorries as they followed the car high over the brow that stole my breath, knowing we had no chance if they chose to stop and check who we were.
36
Pulling over to the verge and with Toni climbing from her seat to the back, I watched the oncoming white of the police car loom into view. It headed a convoy for which I couldn’t make out the tail, with more vehicles rising over the crest as the long line continued towards us.
I didn’t flinch at the click from the empty gun. Instead, putting my hand to my ear, I moved my mouth as if I was on the phone, taking the time to let a smile out to the flowing traffic as the scream cut short with an abrupt thud against the floor of the van.
The police car didn't stop, didn't pause after the driver glanced in my direction. My gaze turned to the truck at its back and the next as it passed, glimpsing soldiers in full kit in the wing mirror, their faces fixed and serious.
The next truck blocked my view and I looked back through the windscreen, my fear turning to a warm sensation as I counted the trucks full of soldiers who would save the day, who would stop this nightmare. Even though they were too late for me.
Truck after truck kept coming, soon followed by Land Rovers and other army vehicles in their wake. I could feel th
e smile stretching out my face until the last heavy vehicle passed by with another police car following behind. It slowed as the driver caught my eye.
I twitched the most pleasant smile I could raise in the circumstances, letting my empty hand drop to my side as I told Toni all that happened. Only silence replied from the back.
With the car slowing, I rolled down the window to let the cold in.
“You got here fast,” the policeman said as he pulled from the car he’d left in the middle of the road. He was older than me. Late twenties, his face full of a black beard, the top of his head, too. He wore thick, dark-rimmed glasses, the kind kids would have bullied you for at my school. “You know there’s a D-Notice in force? You can't use anything you've got.”
I let my on-camera smile through, twitching up the side of my lips.
“We haven't got anything,” I said. “I’m supposed to be standing by for when you boys want to announce to the world,” I replied, bunching up my cheeks. “But I don’t much mind for the cold. Do you know any good hotels close?” I added, running my fingers through my hair.
He shook his head, speaking quicker than I expected.
“Don't stay close,” he said, his smile faltering.
I pulled a sharp deep breath before reminding myself to keep it subtle.
“What do you mean? Are you saying the chemical spill is affecting people this far out?” I said, letting my voice rise in pitch whilst my eyebrows climbed.
The officer looked to his car and the butch female colleague I hadn't noticed until now in the passenger seat.
“What's your name, officer?”
He returned his look back in my direction, stepping closer to the window.
“Mike,” he replied. The name caught in my head and I paused for a little longer than I should.
“Nice to meet you, Mike,” I said, pushing my hand out through the window. “So where should I stay?” I heard a noise from the back, the sound of a voice quickly muffled. He gave a nervous smile, raising his eyebrows.
