by Neil Davies
#
“And how are you today?” John smiled as he sat on the edge of the bed. Breakfast and Codeine had brightened him considerably. He almost felt human.
Annie sat up, quite unashamed of the thinness of her nightdress.
“I’m okay, I guess. Feeling a little better all the time, except for the dreams.”
John nodded. “Are you well enough to get up today? I need to check the animal traps and wouldn't mind some company.”
“Of course, but you’ll have to leave the room first. I’ll want to be properly dressed if I’m going out of the house.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he smiled. “Your virtue is safe with me.”
“How disappointing.”
John laughed and left the room, unable to quell the fluttering in his stomach, despite the recent horrors. Some things could not be easily suppressed.
Annie dressed quickly, her thoughts on John. She did not dare slip to thinking about her father, and the thing that had killed him and tried to kill her. She knew she would cry if she did, and she did not want to cry, not now.
Once dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, and having washed in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom, she hurried downstairs to where John stood waiting at the open front door.
They strolled to the dried brook without speaking, John checking several of the simple animal traps they regularly baited. He retrieved a small, wiry rabbit from one, and a large black rat from another. Vegetables they had been able to grow, with some success, since The Incident, but meat was hard to come by. Over the last year they had learnt to prepare and eat many animals they would not, previously, have considered as food. Two sprung traps out of the seven checked was an average overnight haul, and the bag at his side, while not full, at least had some satisfying weight to it. When they reached the brook, they sat on the edge of its small v-shaped valley, both careful to sit close together but not to touch.
It was Annie who finally broke the silence.
“I wonder why the water stopped?”
John shrugged. “Could be blocked I suppose, further upstream somewhere.”
“Maybe we should find out where and unblock it? I used to enjoy standing here, watching the water run along.”
John smiled. “It wasn’t exactly very clean.”
“No, but it was ours. It ran along behind our gardens. Somehow bigger streams and rivers just weren’t the same. I used to play down in the water when I was younger and dad….”
She began to cry, covering her face with her hands, as the image of her father appeared in her mind.
John tentatively put an arm around her shoulders and she let her head rest against his chest.
“I’m sorry, Annie. It’s too soon for you to be out. It was stupid of me to bring you down here.”
She smiled thinly through the tears. “It’s not your fault. This whole area reminds me of dad, even in Mrs Jenna’s house it’s the same. Maybe one day, if we ever move somewhere else, but, you know...”
John nodded his understanding, stroking his hand across her hair. She huddled in closer to him, wiping the tear streaks on her face with the back of her hand.
#
The thing that had been Graham rested alongside the half-eaten corpse of the girl. He stretched, disturbing a spider which had been spinning a web in the dead gorse. He felt good. The dead lovers’ blood had satisfied his hunger for maybe a day and a night. Long enough for him to plan his revenge. He could not forget the girl back at the house, nor the man with the gun. Before he sought out his fellow reborn, and led the attack on the settlement as a whole, those two needed to suffer at his own hands. It would not be long before he had his revenge.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Day
Brian Barker gripped his roughly bandaged right wrist with his left hand and grimaced.
"I'm sure that bastard broke it," he said, tentatively moving the wrist, hissing in breath with the sharpness of the pain. His voice was muffled and slurred by the injuries to his face, his nose and lip stiff with dried blood.
"The way I see it, we got off easy. At least we're alive."
Almost twice his young companion's age, Joe Anderson, cradling a headache that would not go away, hoped he could calm the situation. He knew Brian wanted revenge, his pride hurt by the easy way he had been overcome. Joe had seen enough of the stranger to be wary of going up against him again.
"Whoever that guy was, he was trained, and better than us. Forget about him. Let's just move on."
"Forget?" Brian spat the word and winced at the sudden agony from his split lip. "How can I forget the fucker who did this to my face and my hand? He got lucky, that's all. We've been trained too, Joe. Don't forget that. Next time he won't be so lucky."
Joe sighed, knowing he would be unable to restrain his impetuous, sometimes dangerously impulsive, friend. Yes, they had been trained. A minimum stay in the army, basic infantry. It had been where they'd met. They'd toured together in Afghanistan, regular patrols, a few distant fire fights, but the man they'd faced the other day was different. He had to try and persuade his friend one more time.
"Brian, that man was trained much more than us. We both saw them out in the desert. The four-man teams, keeping to themselves, leaving camp under cover of darkness."
"You think he was S.A.S.?"
Joe nodded. "And I, personally, have no wish to go up against him again. For all we know there's a whole team of them out there. We'd be dead before we got close."
Brian said nothing, and Joe was unsure whether that was a good or bad sign. They, like most rank and file soldiers, had a healthy respect for the Special Forces teams. They'd been on patrols in the aftermath of their work, seen the damage, the destruction done. But the other side of that, the underbelly of that respect that bordered on resentment, meant that besting a Special Forces member was a highly prized accolade by some. Joe had little doubt that Brian would see the scalp of this particular soldier a great prize indeed, even if he, Joe, was the only person he could share it with. The only question was which was the greater, Brian's fear or his hatred.
#
"I really am worried about Julie and Stephen," said Mrs Jenna. "Staying out all night is all well and good, but it's been too long now."
John nodded his agreement.
"Don't worry, Mrs Jenna. I was going on a tour of the outlying vegetable plots today anyway. I'll detour off up to Thurstaston Hill. That's where they were headed."
"Thank you, John. I'll feel easier once they're back with us."
#
It took John the best part of two hours to see that their small array of vegetable growing gardens were healthy and relatively untouched by local scavengers. While the reduction in animals since The Incident made hunting frustrating, it did mean less waste in their fruit and vegetable crop.
The last three plots, side by side, each planted with their own varieties, had been dug on what had once been a sports field, nestling at the base of Thurstaston Hill. In the summer months it used to play host to cricket matches, in the winter 7-a-side rugby, and one set of rugby posts still stood, a giant, rotting 'H' against the blackened bracken at the foot of the hill. John's sport had been football and, off-season, he would watch some tennis on the television. Despite living so close to the sports field, he had never visited it, not even during the open-weekend of the 'Caldy Sevens', when visitors and beer flowed with equal liquidity around the field and along the roadsides feeding it. Now, with its once well-kept grass dug up and put to a more practical, but less colourful, use, he regretted never attending. It was often the way of things. Too busy looking to the distance to see what was right beneath his nose.
Happy their crops were healthy, he turned his attention to the hill. If Julie and Steve were up there, oblivious to all the worry they were causing, he might feel obliged to say a thing or two. On the other hand, he would be grateful they were safe and, in truth, was not so blameless in his own past that he could judge others without feeling at least
a little hypocritical.
He checked that the Browning 9mm automatic was fully loaded and returned it to its holster on his right hip. His fingers ran lightly across the extra clips lined up behind it on the belt. He unsheathed the 7" Ka-Bar USMC Fighting Knife on his left, pleased he had found it at the camp. It must have been left by a visiting US Marine, as it certainly wasn't standard British Army issue. But it was a good knife, and you never knew when you might need a good knife.
One advantage of the destruction caused by The Incident was that he didn't have to search for the narrow paths leading from the sports field up onto the hill, instead simply striding across the levelled remains of gorse bushes, his jeans occasionally catching on the odd sprig of new gorse forcing its way through the dead. He headed for the top of the hill, planning to go over and down into those pathways and hollows made by the sandstone rocks. If he had come here wanting some kind of privacy, that's where he would have gone, perhaps even to the iconic block of sandstone named Thor's Rock.
He had climbed that as a child, as all local children had, and, overcome with sudden and unexpected nostalgia, he felt an urge to climb it once more. What harm could there be? Indeed, if he needed to rationalise or excuse his desire, once on top of the rock he would have a good view of the surrounding area and could save himself hours of searching at ground level.
Feeling slightly guilty at wanting to relive his childhood, but nevertheless eager to recapture some small part of the enjoyment of doing something simply for the fun of it, he pushed on towards the crest of the hill.
#
Brian Barker and Joe Anderson left the Larton Army Camp almost empty-handed. The same bastard who had attacked them had also cleared out most of the useful stuff from the armoury, presuming there was much in there to start with. They'd found an old Webley & Scott revolver, which Brian now carried, and a Lee-Enfield rifle that they presumed had been used for training cadets, because basic training was the only previous time they had ever seen such an old rifle. There had been a few boxes of ammunition for each of the guns, but they would need to fire sparingly. Brian still had his knife which, apart from the most recent altercation, had served him well in the past. They did not feel well armed, but at least they had more weapons than before they found the camp.
"If you're seriously thinking of trying to track that guy down," said Joe, as they set out on foot along the narrow country lanes, "bear in mind that we have no idea which way he came from."
"It's not like we were heading anywhere in particular anyway," said Brian, wincing as each step seemed to knock his injured wrist. "We walk. If we find any people, we take what we need from them. If we happen to find that bastard..."
"What? We kill him? Do you really think that'll be easy?" Joe laughed bitterly. "Not only has he outfought us once already, he's now probably better armed than we are. Anyway, like I said before, we have no idea where he came from."
"He was on a bike," said Brian, gritting his teeth, suppressing the anger that threatened to explode towards his companion. "He won't have gone too far on that, I reckon. And there are more ways of attack than a straightforward frontal assault."
Joe shrugged and followed the younger man along the lane. He thought it unlikely they would ever meet that particular stranger again, which suited him fine, so there seemed little point in getting into a major argument about it. They'd spent most of the last year walking, stealing food and drink where people were unwilling to share freely, using threats and violence if theft proved too difficult. He saw no reason that existence, unsatisfying as it ultimately was, shouldn't continue. It was a life, of sorts, and as much as he could realistically expect, given that everything else they had owned or loved had been destroyed in The Incident. They only had each other, and that would just have to be enough.
#
The thing that had been Graham sheltered in a deep gully, once home to a small stream, now dried and gone. Daylight was no problem to him, but it made it easier for others to see him, and he needed rest to allow wounds to heal. But now time was running out for him.
The army of the reborn was on the move.
It wasn't quite telepathy, at least not as he had imagined telepathy would be. He heard no voices, received no clear messages, but nevertheless, he knew. Most of the scouts had returned, and the army was climbing out of the vast underground caverns where it had gathered. And it was not just in his own location. He felt movement all over the country, perhaps even the world. A few missing scouts, himself included, were no impediment to the larger picture.
He had to move sooner and quicker than intended to stay ahead of the army, for just as he knew that it was on the move, he knew that a section of it followed his scouting trail. Eventually he would rejoin, becoming just one of the thousands risen from their graves, but first he must satisfy his need for personal revenge.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Surrounded
The last glow of the sun had almost disappeared from the sky when John literally stumbled over the bodies of Steve Lawrence and Julie Frances.
They lay broken and twisted, their dried blood almost as black as the dead gorse around them. Their throats and their torsos were ripped open, unrecognisable viscera hanging limply out of the wounds. Half-eaten organs littered the area around the bodies, ripped into shreds by tearing teeth. John had seen bomb victims blown apart during his tours in the Middle East, but he had never seen anything quite as shocking, as brutal as this.
He sat on the ground, staring at the death before him, remembering night-time entries into stone compounds, the enemy lit up in his night-vision goggles. They were fired upon. They fired back. He remembered RPGs whistling by so close he felt the heat, bullets zinging off the floor and walls around him. He did as he had been trained. Short controlled bursts from his assault rifle. Grenades through windows where gunfire had been seen. Kicking doors in, firing first, checking later. The euphoric aftermath, high on adrenaline. Checking the dead, finishing off those too injured to save, taking others prisoner. And then he had found the bodies of women and children, huddled together in one of the buildings, mutilated by grenades, riddled with bullets. He had no way of knowing whether any had been thrown or fired by himself, but he felt the sickening guilt all the same. He was there to kill the enemy, not unarmed women and children, hiding from the battle.
He had lasted a couple more weeks, withdrawing into himself, not talking, not being part of the all important team, before he finally broke down. They didn't want someone whose hands shook during a firelight, who cried as he killed the enemy. He was no longer reliable.
The psychiatric discharge had been rushed through without a fuss. He was sent back home, but part of his mind remained in Afghanistan and Iraq and always would.
Steve and Julie were only young. Older, perhaps, than the dead children of his memories, but still only young. They had been brutalised, savaged, and he found himself thinking of the man from the other night. The man who seemed impervious to bullets. If he could survive that, who knew what else he was capable of?
Thoughts of the man led to thoughts of Annie. Was it wise to have left her unguarded? Mrs Jenna and Mr Hobsen would do their best, but they would be no match for a determined attacker. He needed to get back, report what had happened to Steve and Julie. But most of all, he needed to be there for Annie.
As he stood, he heard sounds of movement further down the hill and cursed himself, angry that he had allowed his concentration to slip while deep in his memories. Now, as his thoughts focused on the present, he could hear the soft padding of many footsteps on the ground, the crunching of dead gorse, a low murmur of incomprehensible voices. No words that he could distinguish, just a constant drone of murmuring.
He felt fear settling in his stomach, bringing a faint nausea. He fought to control the shaking of his hands as he drew his 9mm automatic. Whoever was out there did not sound friendly to him. What was more, as he turned a full circle, wishing he had the night-vision goggles of old, he realised that they wer
e on all sides of him. He was surrounded. He guessed it wouldn't be long before he found out by whom.
#
Mrs Jenna lit the old oil-based storm lamp. With the same match, she managed to light the candle that stood on the windowsill before the flame burned too low and threatened her fingers. They were beginning to run low on matches, so it was important to make them last as best they could.
She handed the oil lamp to Annie, who smiled and accepted it.
"Thanks, Mrs Jenna. Are you sure you don't need it down here though?"
"No dear. The candle's fine for me. You take the lamp up with you. It's safer to carry around than the candle, and less chance of it blowing out just when you need it most."
Annie said 'goodnight' and walked slowly up the stairs, holding the lamp ahead of her. When the local electricity substation finally died, all those months ago, she had not immediately thought that light would be the thing she missed most. But, in the long run, being able to see was more important than TVs, radios, hair dryers etc. They were lucky Mrs Jenna's late husband had been one to collect lamps and candles, ever since the blackouts back in the 70's.
Annie was happy to stay with Mrs Jenna for now. It felt safer that way, and helped keep unpleasant memories at bay. She just wished John would hurry back from his rounds of the allotments. She would feel more secure once she knew he was home, watching out for all of them. She liked to think he watched out for her more than most.
#
Joe was first to see the candlelight in the middle distance as he and Brian walked cautiously along the pitch-black country lanes.
"Houses up ahead," he said, his voice little above a whisper. It didn't seem right to speak any louder on such a still night.
"Let's hope for their sake that they're friendly," said Brian, his hand falling onto the grip of the pistol in his belt.
Joe nodded, adding silently, for my sake too. He was aware of the violence his companion barely held in abeyance, and how easy it was for it to explode. In contrast, Joe knew he had a slow burning fuse. Nevertheless, given enough provocation, he was as capable of violence as Brian. He just didn't enjoy it as much.
