You park your car buddy and you walk to the lobby. The exercise is good for you. Live with it, you fucking wingebag.
Joe cast a look back and saw that the squatting troupe of people were spreading out, slowly dispersing. Whatever they’d been doing, an activity that had a strangely animal aspect despite their human shapes, was finished.
Even big doggy dinners don’t last all that long nowadays hey Joe? Not when the diners seem to be ...well, kind of monstrous.
He noticed other figures, ranged around the square.
Still and suspended.
Bodies that were ragged and somehow wrong. Something not right with their proportions and the way they held themselves. As if they were poised, primed for action, ready to spring. Maybe it was his imagination, but they also seemed to be angling in his direction.
They look like they’re looking Joey-boy. Looking at you guys. Looking at you and your new-found friend. Do you think maybe that they have those hungry eyes? Didn’t get an invite to the doggy dinner and are peckish, on the look-out for a hot snack. Hot and wet. Hot off the bone maybe?
“Come on,” Seb hissed.
The boy had slipped round him and started down the alley but paused to call back. No lack of urgency now, the boy appeared scared and irritated in equal measure as he slowly sidled away.
Joe persuaded his tired legs to move and tracked the boy down the passageway. Dark in there, the walls on either side hid the sun. He looked back, bumped the wall.
Stumbled.
Cursed and resumed.
Looking at his feet, as if that would help.
Looked forward and the boy was gone.
Joe picked up the pace and emerged into sunlight.
Dazzled, headachy.
Hungover for fuck’s sake, Joe, that’s what you are. You’re fucking-well properly hungover, grand-tour hangover stylee. You need this shit like you need an enema with a rusty old length of scaffolding. But pucker up fella, it’s here and now whether your famed coping mechanism can deal with it or not.
He heard growls and saw peripheral figures, didn’t have time to capture details.
Was just bowled over with the force of impact.
Hit hard and was flung to the ground and, oh wow, bastard-wow, was that tarmac fucker hard.
It might look grey and non-descript and pliant, but man-oh-man it was hard.
Hard enough to scramble his thoughts, draw blood from the back of his head and raise an egg there that would be an acceptable offering at any easter gift exchange.
Found his arm holding the baton under the chin of something unspeakable, something that meant to hurt him.
Properly fuck him up.
Spit flying from teeth that snapped and snapped again. Horrible teeth. Irregular and jagged. Huge and wet.
In the background, he saw Seb swing that rusty blade at another attacker with a wild abandon.
Remembered the boy saying he’d gone wild before, that it was the only way he’d survived. Oh man, it was wild you know ...wild.
What about that Joey-boy? Wildwood metal soaring and glinting in the beautiful fucking sunlight like a glittering poem of savage motion and violent movement.
Blood flying as machete and head connected with lethal momentum.
A deformed skull cleaved, rent asunder and ruined.
Blade sticking and wrench-twisted free as the boy spun with his strike.
Uninhibited force unleashed by the quality that youth seemed to possess in abundance. Adaptation fuelled by experience, adjustment without preconception. Carnage a reasonable answer.
Another creature slammed into the boy, knocking him from Joe’s vision.
Gaping jaws drooling at his face, barely held at bay.
Smelled breath that would sour milk at a hundred yards.
Flecks of unimaginable meat lodged between viciously bared teeth.
You die here Joey-boy. Right here, right now, in this anonymous, meaningless place. How good is that?
Only half felt his cheek scored as a wicked talon scraped down his face, ripping a fair old chunk from his ear lobe as it struck the ground.
Heaved and propelled the attacker over his left shoulder as his legs slid up and pumped upwards.
Came to his feet with the momentum, panic fuelled muscles performing to a level not witnessed for years. Looped the baton in a near vertical arc as the figure rose.
Brought it down with a crashing force on that dreadful head. The sound and sense of the impact unlike anything he could recall, a somehow hollow and almost disappointing noise combined with a reverberation that travelled up his arm bringing a tale of terrible damage done.
Joe staggered back, nearly overbalancing in compensation for his forward motion.
Chew on that motherfucker. Chew it up and digest it, you fucking cunt of a bastard cocksucker fecker.
Try and bite me? You mouthy motherfucker abomination thing, just go ahead, carry on, keep on trying and we’ll dance. We’ll dance and dance like there’s no tomorrow. That suits me just fine. That suits me right down to the ground. The hard old ground.
Was amazed to see it struggling back upright, definitely hurt but still going.
Still after fancying another twirl round the dance floor with little-ole Joey-boy.
Swung his aching arm again but, oh Alison, his aim ain’t true on this occasion and the blow glanced across its temple, skidded over its skull, the baton flying free of Joe’s hand.
And before he can react, it’s on him again and all that he can do is grab its upper arms in an effort to hold off the claws and mouth.
Was unable to soften his fall as it took him to that ever-loving hard, oh so fucking hard, concrete-tarmac once more.
Turned his head as he landed, attempting to avoid an oncoming bite, and bang went that good old hard ground. Tar and aggregate and water mix, who the fuck knew, oops upside his poor old head one more time for luck.
Stars appeared, and blackness beckoned, and thought became a disjointed process at that point. A neurometabolic cascade commenced that bewildered him. As the creature reared its ugly awful head back to strike, he had a moment to hope that his ex-wife and child had somehow survived this madness.
Wherever the fuck they were. Wherever the fuck he was.
Nothing left then.
The fall and shock of impact had sapped whatever fight he had. He floated helplessly into a period of vulnerability and neurobehavioral abnormality that moved him beyond clear thought.
The blade sliced into its neck, just below the jawline, with such force that the thing was lifted off and away from him.
“Come on, come on. Get up. Come on, please. Get up Now. We have to get away before more come.”
The boy swam into view.
Sebastian?
Framed by sunlight, shimmery and darkly angelic. An angel with a dirty face and filth encrusted clothes.
And a darkly dripping machete.
Hey Joey-boy, it’s all getting a bit dark isn’t it?
“Yeah, yeah, right.”
The words slurred out of his mouth of their own accord.
Joe struggled to his feet, surveyed the scene with a numb detachment.
He was supposed to be looking after the boy wasn’t he?
But the boy had just saved his life.
He stood, walked and stopped.
Hands on knees vomited what little there was in his stomach.
Watched the vomit swirl and creep like it might be tea leaves in a residue of tea with a hidden message.
Saw the stick, the baton, and picked it up.
Adi’s baton.
Good old Adi, gone somewhere but not forgotten.
Stared around at bodies.
Four of them.
Ergo, therefore, curriculum vitae, carpe diem and all that bullshit Joey-Joe, one handed Sebastian has dealt with three of them. As well as yours, the one that was going to eat you. That bitey nasty thing that was all set to have a chewing good time. All set to be chowing down and giving yo
u the ultimate face lift. By that, Joe-Joe, we mean rip your face away baby-boy. Tear it up like gypos ripping up rotten tarmac with lucky heather in their pockets and an itch to move on ...hahaha.
One of the bodies was small.
A child.
In soccer pyjamas. Faded red covered with black and white footballs. Mixed with the filth, he could see the pilling which comes with frequent washing. That detail, those little bobbles zoomed up into his eyes and stuck there like burning.
The neck was effectively severed, barely attached to its body.
The other three bodies were fully grown.
Adult monster people.
“Come on. Over here. Please. Now.”
Seb stood by an enormous boat of a BMW. In its day, some salesman’s wet dream. A tank-like saloon designed to sail motorways like a schooner sails the waves.
That ugly brute must gobble petrol like a sullen whore swallowing on overtime, hey Joe?
He could feel the drifting.
The dissolution of what he was.
Could feel parts of him going away from him.
It was not unlike the tide ...and how he loved the tide.
When he surrendered to it or when it simply swept him away.
Loved how it transported him to the places that he had to visit even though he didn’t know it.
Detested where he washed up.
Ahhh, the boy hasn’t maintained that car very well. There’s dirt and stuff all over the bonnet and windows. And dents aplenty on that precious German bodywork.
Keep going now or you’ll die Joe.
Jesus, watch where you’re going boy for Christ’s sake, those lines on the road are there as boundaries, not so’s you can see how many times you can criss-cross over them weaving a pretty fecking pattern.
There was a part of Joe’s mind that knew he wasn’t thinking straight. Knew that the knock had scrambled his wires, knocked his thought patterns skewiff.
Knocked him into himself.
But it didn’t stop the thoughts tumbling through his head like dirty shirts being thrown out of an apartment window. Twisting and turning in the air as they fluttered to earth, caught by the delinquent wind to fly wherever it took them.
God, remember that. New York ...or was it Brighton?
That baby hasn’t seen a clean in a month of Sundays. That car could do with a damn good wash, a real good rubba-dub-dub elbow-grease job and then wax that bastard afterwards.
Wax that bastard you little bastard.
Because it’s covered in dirty maroon coloured shit.
We’ll have to have a serious chat with this lad about responsibility and value.
The lazy little gobshite is going to shitehill on a handcart.
I started out with nothing and I ...most of it is still there ...the nothing.
Some blues singer, he can’t remember, but it’s so true any which way you hear it. The Nothing never leaves you.
Most of the nothing is still there. The nothing sticks like shit doesn’t it Joe. There’s still that awful emptiness, isn’t there? Isn’t there?
You’ve got to know the value of things. I came to this shitehole cunting dive of a place from the ‘ole country with nothing and kept hold of the same.
So heed me boy. Look after your things and you might end up with something ...you lazy little shitefecker bastard cunt bastard.
And then he was in the driver’s seat, no memory of how he got there. Only another black space.
Trembling hands plugged in the key and started the vehicle and he saw runners emerging from the alleyway and more of them entering the car park through open gates.
“Drive! Drive! Go, go now. Please go now. Drive through them. We have to get out or they’ll get us.”
Joe wondered why the boy was shouting but shifted into drive because that’s what you had to do.
Ploughed carefully through the figures that were blocking the parking lot gates.
No worries. Go easy though on the ploughing. Christ knew he didn’t want to total the car. But it badly needed washing, so a little more grunge wouldn’t matter.
Crazy, really crazy.
These guys didn’t move and the car was stalling as ....stuff got caught up in the wheels.
Ahh God Joe, those low profile tires look good and sound smooth except there’s no fucking practicality.
I told you that. They aren’t sensible if we’re being absolutely fecking honest.
He persevered and was soon on some busy street.
Lots of people. Weird people.
The crazy fuckers were running in the road, actually throwing themselves at the car more often than not.
The boy is talking and talking.
Gabbling like some fucking old woman scared of her shadow, filling her shitty old knickers with poop and polluting the air with incessant talk of death and destruction.
That ole bitch is better off dead.
And dear Jesus it smells bad in here, in this enclosed space. Could open a window but that doesn’t seem like the greatest of ideas right now. The boy would shit hisself all over again, shit a brick. Yep, shit a big old brick. And have the screaming, blathering abdabs into the bargain no doubt.
He isn’t too fragrant himself if he thinks about it, and God knows he’s every reason to be stinking, but that smell, not his smell, the other smell, is really cloying in here.
Sticking like fungus, stinking up the nostrils and climbing hand over fist into his brain like an aesthetically unforgiveable song that lingers after a drunken night.
But Lord God, the boy is pretty funky isn’t he?
Copperiness and sweetness, sweat and used up adrenalin sourness ...but something ...nastier underneath all of that.
Joe drove with nothing so much as his own will to stay alive. Direction without conscious thought, dictated by swarms of creatures that were once human but now packs of ravening beasts.
Pedal to metal where possible in a desperate attempt to escape the city. Escape what had become a vast metal and glass maze filled with feral animals.
Wild beasts that were vaguely human in form but ferociously alien in intent.
He paused and waited when necessary. Nothing too considered, instinct set free by desperation. Hid and squirmed in fear when there was no other choice. Drove with a brutal charioteers abandon as his dull mind was dulled further still with concussed fatigue.
They circled on themselves and circled again, frantically backtracked and retraced as their route was frustrated in seemingly endless waves of murderously mutated humanity. But he didn’t stop or give up.
Joe clung to life as he’d always clung to it.
When dusk fell, he’d somehow arrived at a deserted roadside establishment in quiet countryside, the city behind them.
He stopped the car at the far reaches of an empty car park.
The boy a slouched unresponsive shape beside him.
Climbed exhausted into the back. Body running on empty and consciousness blinking intermittently like a faulty engine light.
Briefly shuffled and fidgeted for comfort before giving in to a sleep that was like coma.
Chapter 3.
George Ascending.
George Lowton was twelve and very, very scared. More scared than he’d ever been in his short and relatively sheltered life.
That was why he was in the loft. The dim and dusty, cobwebby and mildly claustrophobic loft. Face tear-stained and tense. Teeth nibbling his delightfully fulsome lower lip.
Not that he was claustrophobic. Or scared of heights for that matter. In fact, the few times in the past when his dad had allowed him to venture up here, to precariously climb the step ladder leaned against the hatch frame, he’d been pretty excited by the experience.
A cramped, slightly alien space. Utilised for storage and not much else. Certainly not part of his daily routine. But right above his head when he slept the sleep of the innocent. The loft entrance was in his bedroom, a hatch that swung down when you pushed a button in it with a
rubber ended pole.
Not a place he regularly frequented.
He’d figured out how to get in there without the ladder. When the house went still. In the dead hours, he could achieve that precarious balance on furniture near to the hatch and boost himself into the aperture. Ascend to an alien place and feel the sweet wrongness of it, thrilling through his body, the buzz of scared excitement.
This was a lot different to those rare occasions though. Then it had merely been an essentially harmless adventure, being a bit naughty. Or an approved and accompanied mission to retrieve a suitcase or some seldom used piece of household ephemera.
There hadn’t been monsters below him.
He’d never felt that his life was balanced on the thin edge of whether he kept quiet enough to avoid drawing attention or accidentally bumped something in the dimness. He’d never torn his finger nails in frantic haste getting up here, never had to shut himself inside and crouch in the dark, the sweetly safe scare of innocent mischief replaced by genuine terror. At that point, for George, the character of the loft had changed out of all recognition. It might have been fair to say that all of the fun had gone out of it.
His dad had promised to redo the whole thing.
Kit and caboodle Geo, kit and caboodle.
Move the hatch onto the landing. Put in a proper dropdown stairway.
George thought now that the original location was maybe the only reason he was still alive.
A pretty big factor anyway, in his humble opinion. His dad had mentioned a few times that they ought to relocate that hatch to the upstairs landing instead of it being in one of the bedrooms. Like Mr Davis had done at number 15.
Thankfully, his dad had never made the changes. Mostly, George thought, because his mother had said that they had plenty of other things to spend good money on ...did his dad actually want to go on holiday this year?
That, and his dad was always really busy with work and stuff. If his dad had moved it, George reckoned that there wouldn’t have been time to escape up here. That one additional barrier, his bedroom door, was all important.
Locking his bedroom door on it (her) as it pursued him had gained a little extra time. Enough to scramble up and close the trapdoor behind himself. A precious few seconds that had enabled him to ascend before he heard it splinter through the door in the room underneath him. Heard it growling and hissing. He wouldn’t have had those ever so precious seconds if the entrance had been on the landing.
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