Max Gilbert

by Simon Clark

  David watched his dad race back the few paces to the sea-fort to drag the doors shut. He fumbled with the lock and the padlock before running back to the car and into the front passenger seat.

  "Chris. Your door. Lock it."

  The front tyres squealed as the car lurched forward.

  "Slow down, Ruth. It's okay, they won't be up here."

  "You're an expert, then?"

  "No, but they never left the water. They came in with the tide; they went out with the tide. Love-we'll end up on the beach."

  The note of the engine dropped; they slowed as they ran off the end of the causeway onto the metalled road that linked with the coast road, tyres swishing through patches of sand.

  When they reached the coast road that ran to Out-Butterwick between the dunes and the marshes, she didn't slow the car. The coast road ended there; there would be no traffic.

  Seconds later she braked hard again. The car slid to a stop.

  "Shit ..." She punched the wheel. "Shit, shit, shit."

  "Jesus Christ."

  "What's happening, Mum? Why are we stopping here?"

  "Shush, David ... Just a minute."

  His dad looked at his mum, right into her eyes.

  "Ruth ... We're trapped."

  "We'll leave the car, Chris. We can walk."

  "Normally we could. But... I don't think we can risk it. Not now." His dad took a deep breath. "Ruth ... I think our only alternative is to go back. If we go back to the sea-fort, lock the gates, we'll be safe. After all, they built the bloody place to keep out an army."

  David stretched up against the seatbelt to look out.

  Through the windscreen he could see that the coast road had now come to an abrupt end. Running from the dunes to his left, across the road, to one of the marsh ponds was a mound of beach pebbles. David guessed the mound of pebbles was as high as his head. He could climb it easily. But not the car. It would get stuck. They couldn't pass on either side because of the high dunes and the miles of slimy mud and water.

  "The beach. We can drive along the beach."

  "You'd have to cross the stream that runs across the beach. It's fairly deep. If we get the car stuck... It means going on by foot... And soon the tide'll be on the turn. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to build that barrier."

  "Those men in the water?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine."

  "But what are they? We don't know if they're dangerous. They might be ... they might be just ..." She put her face in her hands. Quickly she recovered. "You're right ... You only have to see them ... You know they're dangerous ..."

  "What's the matter, Dad? Why are we trying to run away?"

  "We're not, kidda. We just want to visit Nan and Grandad. ..." A pause. "Looks as if the council have dug up the road again. We'll just have to wait."

  His mum reversed the car to where the road was widest then turned it round.

  David pulled his legs up to his chest, hugging his knees.

  This was not nice. This was not nice at all.

  That evening they came back in with the tide once more. Seven Easter Island statue heads, the color of congealed blood. They stood shoulder-deep in the surf and faced out to sea-eyes shut, mouths partly open.

  "What are we going to do, Chris?"

  Chris and Ruth stood on the battlements looking down at the dark head-shapes in the sea. He put his arm around his wife's shoulders.

  He didn't know what they could do.

  "We'll just sit and wait. The gates are locked. Nothing can get through them. Whatever they are, they'll go in the end."

  "What about all those people in Out-Butterwick? I'm worried about them."

  "They can look after themselves. It's us, the Stainforths, that are important. We're not leaving the sea-fort until it's all over."

  They stood, arms around one another like frightened children, watching the tide, and the things it carried, roll forward and drown the beach.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  "What happens next?"

  David paused, a chunk of chocolate an inch from his mouth. "Superman drops the iceberg through the hole into the nuclear reactor."

  "And the fire goes out?"

  "It goes out ... pers-shhh ..." David pushed the chocolate into his mouth and turned his attention back to the TV.

  Chris sat with his arm around David. He'd done it to make the boy feel safe after they had found the road blocked. Now it was Chris who gained more reassurance from hugging another human being. Even one six years old, wearing red pajamas with a jet fighter on the front. Ruth moved about at the far end of the caravan making coffee and slicing pieces of cake. He could guess what she was thinking.

  "Fancy a drink?" he asked David.

  "Milk, please. And some cake."

  "You'll burst if you eat anymore."

  Chris went to where Ruth was chopping at a slab of Madeira.

  "Coffee."

  As she slid the cup across the worktop he took her hand.

  "Can you think of another way?"

  She shrugged.

  He spoke softly. "We've got to do this for David's sake. It's a pretense, I know. But we've got to act as if everything is normal. That we're just going to stay in the sea-fort a few days. We've got videos, food, drink-all we've got to provide for David is a smiling face and play with him as if nothing ... is happening."

  "What is happening, Chris?"

  "Christ knows ... But we know this: we know it might not be safe outside the sea-fort. Now we've got those things in the sea."

  "But they're interested in the sea-fort, Chris. Or are they interested in something inside the sea-fort? Us."

  "We don't know that."

  "But we can make a damn good guess. Like we can guess they put the barrier of stones across the coast road. They don't want us to leave. Why?"

  "All I can say is don't worry. Look, these walls are over twenty feet high, they're five feet thick, solid stone. The only way in is through the gates-and the timber is that thick." Chris held his hands ten inches apart. "I've stacked bricks behind them. You couldn't push through those things with a tank. Believe me, love, what's out there stays out there-nothing, absolutely nothing, can get in."

  "So we stay in here, then; and everything in the garden is lovely."

  "For David's sake-yes. We certainly can't drive where. If we walk, we can't guarantee it won't be straight into one of those things."

  She shook her head sharply. "I keep thinking about the people in the village. I remember how kind they were when we moved in. Particularly Mark Faust and Tony Gateman. They made us welcome."

  His voice turned to a hiss. "Welcome. They tried to burn our bloody home down."

  "Who's guessing now, Chris? We don't know that. We do know that Fox was here. And we know he's sick here." she tapped her temple. "Don't you believe Tony when he said he was trying to stop him? That he'd taken the petrol can off Fox?"

  "Do I hell. I believe he and Fox were in it together. And probably Faust."

  "And the whole of Out-Butterwick as well? Chris, you are paranoid."

  He held the cup with both hands-as if squeezing a throat.

  "Look," she said, "I appreciate you are doing what you think is best for us. But I'm worried about those people in the village. Okay, nothing might happen to them. But if it does ... Chris, they are defenseless people living in little wooden cottages; they haven't got a castle to lock themselves up in."

  "What are you suggesting?"

  "That we go on foot-if it's safe enough-to the village. We warn the villagers. Also we can phone the police from there."

  "What if those jokers out there have blocked the road out of Out-Butterwick? There's only the one."

  "Then we ask anyone who wants to, to come back to the sea-fort. It would only be for an hour or two before help comes."

  She looked up at him expectantly.

  He laughed-a humorless sound. "You have got to be joking. I'll tell you this: you, David and I are not moving from this se
a-fort. That gate is staying locked until it's all over. And I'm sure as hell not going to bring a single one of those people from the village in here. They've been against us from the start."

  He went back to sit next to his son. She stood at the kitchen sink, her back to him.

  Before it grew dark, Chris walked once more around the top of the sea-fort's walls. It had grown cold; a cloud-laden sky lumbered overhead. The sea swirled around the flanks of the sea-fort, breaking here and there in a wash of foam. In the gloom, the seven figures were dark shapes against a slightly lighter background of sea. Even so, some deeply disturbing quality shot them through, reminding him of hungry reptiles-watching and waiting.

  With an effort he turned his mind to making the place more secure. He decided to use the timbers he'd stacked in the courtyard. He could wedge them behind the gates. He was convinced. Nothing could get in. They would be perfectly safe. All they needed to do then was sit and wait. This thing would sort itself out. By tomorrow, he promised himself, those things would be gone. Life would return to normal and he could return to working on the sea-fort.

  He continued his patrol. He climbed the iron ladder from the top of the courtyard walls onto the fort building.

  Ruth's suggestion that they bring the villagers from Out-Butterwick to the sea-fort had been ridiculous. What if they were trapped here for days? Where would they sleep? They had ample food for three. But for twenty?

  He reached the iron ladder at the far end of the building and descended to the wall on the far side of the courtyard. Every few paces he leaned over the wall to look down into the rolling surf twenty feet below before continuing his patrol.

  On the walkway he found a comic. He picked it up. It was one of the old Superman comics Mark Faust had given David on the night of Gateman's barbecue.

  As he looked at it he suddenly felt touched by the man's kindness.

  He rubbed his jaw. Without his even trying the memory came: Mark pushing David on the swing, the big man's hearty laugh. Chris sitting back enjoying Tony Gateman's beer and smelling the aroma of beefburgers sizzling on the barbecue.

  Half an hour before, Ruth had called him paranoid. Maybe he had been hard on Gateman that morning. What if the guy had been totally innocent? Maybe he had just been walking by when he'd seen Fox wildly dousing the car with petrol.

  No. He closed off the flow of thoughts. Wild horses wouldn't drag him to the village. He'd concentrate on making the sea-fort safe for himself and his family.

  He promised himself he'd make an early start the next morning on strengthening the barricades behind the doors.

  As he walked down the steps he stopped, struck by an outlandish idea.

  Immediately, he went down to the sea-fort building, opened the doors, and went inside.

  "What are you doing, Chris?"

  Chris, standing in one of the sea-fort's empty barrack rooms, hadn't heard her approach.

  He looked round. "I had planned on taking out more timber to barricade the gates, but ..."

  "But what?"

  "But ..." He gave a small smile. "But now I'm trying to work out just where on earth we're going to put twenty unexpected guests."

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  "Ready?"

  "I'm ready." Chris zipped up his leather jacket. In his hand he carried the axe-handle; as long as his arm, its weight felt reassuring. "Ruth, close the door after me and lock it."

  "Don't worry. I will."

  "And don't open it again until I get back, not under any circumstances."

  He kissed her. He felt the tension in her face with his lips.

  "This goes without saying, Chris. Be careful. If it doesn't look right; if anything's on the beach-anything-come straight back. Then we'll do as you wanted in the first place. We'll lock the gates and sit it out."

  He shot a look back at the caravan. David looked through the end window, his face pale and frightened.

  "I shouldn't be more than an hour," he said. "Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. That gives me thirty to phone the police and talk to Gateman."

  "Careful, love." She kissed him.

  The closing gate shut off Ruth's worried expression. He didn't move until he heard the bolts ram home, then he jumped off the causeway onto the beach.

  Low tide. The sea must have been a good hundred yards from the sea-fort. Even so he felt a growing tension as he walked quickly away.

  He kept midway up the beach. It would have been quicker to have crossed the dunes to Out-Butterwick, but there were too many hollows up there that could hide ... Well, that could hide something unpleasant. The memory of the encounter two nights before still left a ragged memory.

  When he looked in the direction of the sea he saw for the first time a mist drawing in. Even so he could make out seven dark heads in the surf. From here they could have been seal-heads poking out of the water.

  Could have been.

  He shivered and quickened his step. Behind him the sea-fort had become a huge block resting on the beach, its edges growing fuzzy in the thickening mist. For a moment he could see Ruth standing on the seawalls. He saw her arm raised in a slow wave; he waved back.

  Then the mist thickened. He could see her no more.

  Chris glanced at his watch. Seven o'clock.

  He had given no thought to what he would say to the villagers when he arrived. They were in danger. He knew that. The feeling came in invisible waves from the sea. You could almost put your hands into it; a half-solid thing that made the hairs on your neck and body stand on end. But what was the danger? How could he explain it to the villagers? If the village had been cut off from the outside world like Manshead, how would he be able to persuade a mainly aging population to leave their comfortable homes to go and sleep on the stone floors of the half-derelict sea-fort? They would laugh in his face.

  Tightening his grip on the axe-handle, Chris walked faster. Soon the tide would be on the turn. And whatever was in the water would return with the incoming sea.

  David climbed the stone steps up to the walkway that ran around the top of the sea-fort walls.

  His mum and dad were anxious. He knew that. Like he knew it was something to do with what they had seen in the sea.

  When he reached the top, he watched his mother for a moment. She leaned forward onto the wall, chin resting on her hand, looking down the beach in the direction of the sea.

  "Mum ... Where's Dad gone?"

  "To the village. To see Tony Gateman."

  "To hit him with the stick?"

  "No ... To talk to him."

  "Why?"

  "Go down and play in the caravan. There's a lolly in the breadbin."

  Unhappily, he returned to the caravan below.