by Neil Davies
"That thing killed my father. Attacked me!"
And was shot point blank by John and yet survived, thought Geoff. I wish I knew what we were up against.
"So why didn't he attack you again tonight? If anything, it sounds like he saved you."
Annie said nothing for a moment, gathering her thoughts, trying to remember details from the recent attack, while her mind rebelled against the images, pushing to repress them.
"We were easy targets," she said finally. "I mean, Mrs Jenna was already out of it, and to be honest, I couldn't have fought him off. I was on the edge of letting that bastard with the gun..."
She broke down, tears dripping into her mug of tea, the faint plop, plop, loud against her quiet sobbing.
Geoff could think of nothing to say that didn't sound trite. He felt useless, unable to even hold her close, because that in itself felt wrong when he knew so little about her. And that was a sad fact, now that he thought about it. He really knew hardly anything about Annie, about Mrs Jenna, even about John, and he felt closer to John than to anyone. All those years living as neighbours, and yet it was only since The Incident that they had even talked, beyond polite conversation. It had taken a disaster to bring them together. The thought both annoyed and saddened him.
Feeling that he had to do something, despite the awkwardness he felt, he sat next to Annie and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, resting her head against his chest. He sighed with relief, that simple movement justifying the risk he felt he had taken.
"He might come back," said Annie through the last of her tears. "Once he's done whatever he's doing with the man he dragged off, he might come back for me."
"I don't think..."
"It doesn't matter," snapped Annie. "I'm sorry, Mr Hobsen, I have to face the possibility. But I'll fight back this time. He won't take me easily."
Her voice had strengthened, taking on a strident, almost hysterical tone that Geoff found disturbing.
He let his arm drop as she pushed herself to her feet.
"I need to get dressed." She handed him her unfinished mug of tea. "Could you keep an eye on Mrs Jenna? I won't be long."
"Of course. Annie?" he hesitated.
"Yes?"
"Are you sure you're okay?"
She smiled and, to his relief, it looked like a genuine smile, with no trace of anything other than tiredness and understandable worry. The momentary hysteria had gone.
"Yes, I'm fine. But thanks for asking, and for being here."
He watched her leave the bedroom and then turned to check on Mrs Jenna. She had not moved.
#
The creatures broke his fall.
John landed on two of them, their bodies taking much of the impact as they collapsed beneath his weight.
Pushing to his feet in the middle of momentarily surprised creatures, he thrust his knife into the forehead of one to his left and put a bullet through the head of another in front of him. Before those bodies fell he pushed them into their companions, using them to clear a slight path. Fingers grasped his clothes, his hair, filth-encrusted nails scratching bloody furrows in the skin of his neck and hands. He shoved, stabbed, kicked and fired at point blank range. For one frightening moment, as arms wrapped around his legs, he thought he would fall and knew that, if he did, he would never get up again. He stabbed downward, again and again, until the arms loosened and he was able to pull free.
Abandoning accuracy, he swung the knife back and forth in short arcs, the blade slicing flesh, chopping fingers. It was not lethal, but it fuelled the general confusion and mayhem, and he felt he was making better headway.
Gunfire opened up again from the newly arrived creatures, now coming close to the struggle. Bullets thudded into the things around John, inadvertently aiding his efforts. He just had to hope a stray one didn't find its way to him.
It seemed an eternity, in reality only seconds, but suddenly he was out of the crowd, bursting through the last line of creatures onto the blackened gorse of the hill.
He ran, zigzagging as bullets hit the ground about him and screamed through the air nearby. In a last act of defiance, he unloaded the automatic back towards the things, not caring if he killed any, only wanting to add to the confusion and help his escape.
He did not stop running until Thor's Rock was far behind him.
#
Annie dressed quickly in the spare bedroom, her stomach turning as she thought of what she had inadvertently exposed to the now dead man in the kitchen. Whatever else, she would be fully clothed when she tried to fight off... whatever it was. And she would fight. However much she was convinced she had no chance, she would fight. No one would find her easy prey again!
Down below, the outside door was still open, the lock shattered, the hinges broken. The body of the man who had struck Mrs Jenna still lay sprawled on the floor where he had fallen, and blood still stained the linoleum, the units, the walls. She had made no attempt to clean, stopping Mr Hobsen when he offered to help. She only wanted to get away from the smell, the death.
She needed some privacy, some escape from talk and questions. As nice as Mr Hobsen was, he always wanted to talk, and she just wanted silence. She hoped he would understand.
He was still sitting on the bed, watching Mrs Jenna, when she returned to the main bedroom.
"Mr Hobsen, I hope you don't mind, but I'd really like to be on my own for a while. You know, to think, to get my head straight about a few things."
Geoff hesitated before answering, trying to weigh up the alternatives and, quite simply, how much he trusted her not to do anything stupid. She had been through such a lot. It was not totally unbelievable that she would harm herself in some way.
"Are you sure? I'm happy to stay, maybe in the other room or something? Keep out of your way?"
"No, really. I'm okay, I just need some time on my own. You should go back to your own house, make sure everything's okay there."
He stood, realising that, short of forcefully staying, there was nothing to do but leave as she wanted him to.
"Remember, I'm just along the way. You want me, you shout."
She nodded, forcing a smile.
"I know. And thank you, for everything."
He waved as he made his way down the stairs.
"I'll do a quick check around the outside on my way home, just to be sure."
She listened as he climbed over the mess in the kitchen and left the house. It was what she wanted, what she needed. Silence. Time to think, and to wait.
So she waited, wishing John would come back, fearing that the strange, frightening creature that was at once saviour and killer would return.
She would not cry again, but she trembled, twisting her hair nervously, sinking to the floor at the side of the bed and taking Mrs Jenna's unresponsive hand in her own.
She waited.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On The Run
John had lost track of time and, to some degree, direction. He had stopped running, slowing to a brisk walk. The empty automatic was re-holstered, but he kept the combat knife in his hand. If he bumped into any more creatures he didn't want the delay of reaching for it to be the last thing he did. As he walked, he fingered the wounds on his neck and hands. He had a vague memory of films and stories with zombies turning living people into other zombies, but he couldn't remember if that was through biting, scratching, or whether he was getting completely mixed up between zombies and werewolves.
"How am I meant to know this stuff?" he said with quiet desperation. "I read Combat magazine, the Hotspur, Chris Ryan novels. I never read horror!"
The moon stubbornly refused to come out from behind dark clouds for anything other than a few, tantalising seconds at a time. In those brief moments of silvery light he tried to make sense of where he was. All the fields and tracks and country lanes looked the same with visibility limited to a few yards. He could make out no landmarks to help him. It was not that he was lost, he told himself, just that he wasn't
sure he was heading in the right direction.
He knew he had started out the right way, after battling his way through the creatures around Thor's Rock, but he could not be certain he had maintained a straight line. Once the rock had been lost to the darkness, he had done his best to stay on track, believing he had been more or less successful. But if that were the case, he should have been close to the houses now, and he should have seen the candlelight in Mrs Jenna's window that she lit every night.
There was no candlelight. There were no houses. Somehow, at some point, he had veered off. He just wasn't sure in which direction.
Each time he stopped, the noise of his own passage dying around him, he could hear the creatures, moaning, shuffling, even an occasional gunshot as they, presumably, thought they saw him. The only good thing about it was that, so far, the creatures had remained behind him. However, he had seen enough during the battle to not be fooled by that slow, shuffling sound. While many shuffled, dragged, even crawled, just like in the occasional zombie movie he had caught on late-night TV after a night at the pub, he knew there were others who walked quickly, even ran. Perhaps it was to do with how long they had been dead and the progress of decay on their bodies? It wasn't something he could give a lot of thought to. Not just now. Maybe later if, and when, he found home again.
As though to confirm his thoughts, he heard soft, fast footfalls to his right, running past him. More running footsteps to the left.
He slowed his breathing, tried to minimise the sound his body made. But even his heart seemed to be pounding louder than ever.
Had they missed him in the dark?
Even if they had, it would mean at least two were now ahead of him, making his journey even more perilous.
He had almost convinced himself that they could no more see him than he could them, when the sound of running feet getting louder, closer, span him to his left.
The creature rushed at him with no scream of warning, no moaning, no sound save feet on blackened gorse. At the last moment, John saw it, appearing out of the darkness, clawed fingers already reaching for his throat.
Instinctively he stepped back, twisted, swept his foot round low. The thing fell, its legs kicked from under it, and sprawled across the ground, throwing up dust and ash.
More running feet. This time in front of him.
A second creature leapt towards him, hitting him hard across the shoulders. The two rolled on the floor with the impact, John scrambling to get away from under, choking on the cloying stench of death and decay that exuded from his attacker. The creature grabbed his arm, reached for his throat, and John thrust the combat knife deep into the other's chest.
It would have killed a normal man, but John had learnt all he needed to know during the earlier battle. His knife blow had done nothing but momentarily stun the creature, but it was enough for John to tug the knife free from its chest and hammer it down through its forehead.
Whatever strange animation burned behind the creature's eyes dulled and died, and it stopped fighting.
John pushed himself wearily to his feet.
Showing no concern for its fallen comrade, the first creature rushed at John once again.
His raised boot caught the oncoming thing in the stomach, the creature gasping out a puff of fetid breath, bending forward with the impact. The combat knife blade sparked briefly in the faint moonlight, arcing downward fast and hard. John buried it to the hilt in the top of the creature's head.
There was no time for him to rest after the fight. Already the sound of the main group was closer than before. He fervently hoped there were no more running ones around. He felt lucky to have escaped this time. If they had been thinking clearly and come armed, he was certain he would now be dead. Whatever had reborn them had not, apparently, returned their full intelligence.
One more thing he was certain of now, he needed to lead the creatures away from the houses. It meant a change of plan, no longer trying directly for home. He could not risk taking these murderous creatures towards Annie and the others. His problem was that, between fighting and running and the largely moonless night, he had no idea which way the houses were. Although the odds were against it, he knew that, whichever way he ran, he could lead the creatures, completely by accident, straight to his home. It was not a risk he was prepared to take.
He could not chance any significant advance until dawn, when he would, he hoped, be able to see exactly where he was. Had he the arms and the ammunition, he would have found a suitable crater and dug in, holding off the creatures until first light. But he only had the knife, for close-in fighting, and the Browning automatic, and that was empty. Defending any position, however strong, was impossible.
He could only think of one strategy that had a hope of working. He needed to circle, to backtrack around the edge of the advancing creatures and turn them. If he found himself back on the hill, then he had a safe area to work in, otherwise he would just have to keep circling. The important thing was not to risk moving any closer to the houses.
Just a few moments ago he had been hoping to see Mrs Jenna's candle in the window, now he hoped not to. If he saw it, the creatures could see it, and they might just lose interest in him and head for the light.
He could confuse them, keep them within the area, always turning to find him. With luck, he could pick off the odd creature at the edge of the horde, ensuring he remained their sole enemy, the one person they wanted to kill. That way they would keep following him, however pointless his direction seemed to be.
He turned towards the not-so-distant sound of the creatures, advancing through the dark, and moved off at an angle, hoping to skim round the outside, making no attempt to move quietly. They had to hear him, smell him, whatever senses they used for tracking their prey. They had to turn and follow.
He just hoped dawn was not too far away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Almost Lost
The first faint wash of dawn woke Annie from a restless and uncomfortable sleep on the bedroom floor. It was barely light enough to see by, but it still brought some comfort to her. Somehow danger hiding in the dark seemed worse than that same danger in daylight. She didn't try to understand it, just accepted it with some relief.
Mrs Jenna still slept and so, not wanting to wake the old woman from her much needed rest, Annie tip-toed out of the bedroom. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, reluctant to witness the bloody horror that lay in the kitchen. She took a deep breath. Blood was just blood, and a dead body couldn't harm anyone. She would not stay trapped upstairs by her irrational fears.
Determined, but trembling, she descended.
Most of the blood had dried to a near-black, the rest puddled like thick glue rather than liquid. Even from the hallway it was a gruesome sight, but she could handle it. Then the smell hit her hard in the stomach. She retched, only just holding back the vomit that threatened. The stench had permeated upstairs and she had managed to become somewhat inured to it overnight, but she was not ready for how much worse it was down in the hallway.
Holding a hand ineffectually over her nose and mouth, she entered the kitchen, very deliberately not looking to the wall where the body had fallen. The backdoor was still off its hinges, and she hurried out into the fresh air beyond, breathing in a huge lungful to try and purge the smell of the kitchen from her body.
For a moment she stood and listened. Nothing. Before The Incident she had often risen early, and it had not been uncommon for her to wake to the Dawn Chorus. The silence of post-Incident mornings was still unnerving.
She took another deep breath.
"Come on, Annie," she said to herself. "Sooner or later you've got to face it. Shit, if John doesn't come back soon, you and Mr Hobsen are probably going to have to bury it before it stinks even more."
She steeled herself for the expected gruesome view, turned, stepped back into the kitchen and... the body was gone!
Frantically, she turned her head one way and another, looking for some clue, some
indication of where the body had disappeared to. Had he really been dead? Yes, she was sure. Then where was the body?
Stepping closer to the pooled, congealed blood that marked where the dead man had fallen, she noticed, for the first time, the scratches in the kitchen worktop nearby, and the rusty nail that had no doubt been used to make them.
Cautiously, as if the markings would somehow leap up and attack her, she edged nearer until she could make out that they formed letters, untidy, shaky letters. As she read, her stomach turned and cold fear settled deep inside her.
Food mine. Others coming. Leave. Now!
#
Part way up the steepest slope of Thurstaston Hill, Graham stored the reclaimed body at the back of the shallow cave formed by an overhang of sandstone rock. He was still nervous about the message. It had taken a long time to write, each letter ripped from his memory by sheer determination, and he worried that, somehow, The Givers Of Life would know he had betrayed them, warned the living. But the more he thought of the girl, the more images, memories, came to him of another girl with blonde hair, and one word. Daughter.
The others were close, on the other side of the hill. He could sense them, just as he could sense they hunted one of the living. He could feel the hunger, the excitement of the chase deep in his mind. They had not run the living to ground yet, but it was just a matter of time.
He was reasonably certain who that living person was. The man from the houses. The man who had shot him. He should be pleased, even want to be part of the kill. But he knew that if the man could reach the houses he would help protect the girl. He wanted, needed, the girl to be safe. A gripping desire for revenge battled with the slow returning memories of a living family. He accepted that the daughter he was gradually remembering would be dead now, but the girl at the houses reminded him of her. He had not been able to save his daughter, and that knowledge was already beginning to strip away the unfeeling, hard shell The Givers Of Life had placed about his mind, but perhaps he could gain some redemption by saving the girl at the houses. To do that he knew he had to put aside his personal vendetta and somehow save the living man who, before long, would fall before the relentlessly hunting reborn.
