Rachel began to occupy more of his thoughts as he noticed the increasing changes in her physical appearance.
His somewhat distant sense of concerned alarm made way for a slithering fear that wormed its way into the pit of his stomach and sat there like a large lump of coal.
Rachel was changing in a way that he didn’t think was possible. Certainly in way that he’d never heard of before.
It was ...uncanny.
More than that. That didn’t really describe how scared he suddenly felt.
It was sinister. He got down on his knees and holding her hand, a hand that seemed to pulse with an alien heat, he asked for God’s mercy upon them both.
The idea of sleeping next to her made him feel nauseous, so he settled on a chair and fought to find sleep.
Another battle with himself lost.
Red-eyed and unshaven, he looked in on his wife the next morning and the fear reared up.
A big and ugly undeniable fear.
The air in the room smelled clotted and earthy. Viscid and tangible.
She was barely recognisable. Physically changed. Twitching and quietly moaning.
Not the sensual moaning of his recent addiction. No, not that. This was aggressive and ...inhuman.
The movement and sounds should have filled him with hope that she was emerging from her coma-like condition. Instead they merely stoked his dread. The hairs across his body stood up and he muttered an imprecation to his oh-so-cruel God. The thing that lay there clothed in his wife’s sweat-soaked nightdress, thrumming with a barely contained energy that he could only think of as ungodly, was no longer his wife.
It was probably at that point that his mind took an irrevocable turn.
Then that he concluded that he was no longer witnessing the work of God but rather the consequences of a decadent world. And the results of his personal slide into debauchery and wickedness.
It was also at that point that he made an illogical decision that probably saved his life. The fact that it also indicated an incipient mental instability was by the by. In a world gone mad it would become progressively more difficult to define any individual’s actions as irrational or crazy.
David got a selection of zip lock ties from the garage and secured his wife to the bed.
Wrists and ankles. First one tie for each limb and then more ties braided around the first. Thorough, David was always thorough. Especially now because ...because she seemed to contain an indefinable ...violence ...a threat. And because she was beginning to look ...very wrong. So very wrong.
Tight, so she was stretched taut enough to severely restrict her ...agitation ...her potential.
He was repelled by the corded, hard nature of her limbs and her wicked looking hands and feet. He found it hard to even look at her balding and thickly veined skull. Her hair was falling out. Was clumped on the pillows and had dropped to the floor at the side of the bed.
He told himself it was because she was in danger of hurting herself. That he couldn’t be at her side constantly and she was showing signs of unpredictable, possibly harmful, movement. In truth, he was scared of her. Scared of the fact that she didn’t really look like his wife anymore.
That she looked like a monster.
He rang emergency services again. Called hospitals and doctors again in desperation. And was rewarded by the same result. Nothing.
In an attempt to do something other than sit wringing his hands and thinking terrible thoughts, he called every personal number he had for members of staff at the school. He got a single answer.
One his PE teachers.
It left him staggered and uncomprehending.
Daniel. Fit and capable Daniel. Not the most stimulating intellect but an unperturbable character. Stoic and always willing to go the distance.
He sounded distraught, near to tears.
“David, can you help me? It’s terrible. Terrible. They’ve changed. Karen and little Benjy. They’re outside.”
Panting voice, laboured breathing.
Muffled background noise mixed with thumps and knocks.
“Sorry, dropped the phone. She’s turned into a monster. I mean it, a real fucking monster. She bit me. David, she bit me ...attacked me. I’m bleeding. Bleeding a lot. A fucking lot.”
The last part shouted, hysterical.
“I’m in the garage, they’re trying to get in. Benjy’s with her now as well I think ...I don’t know what to do. I think they’ll kill me. I really do. I think they’ll fucking kill me.”
A barely contained sob.
David took the phone from his ear and stared at it.
He had no words. Daniel didn’t get flustered, didn’t spout nonsense, didn’t use swear words. When he eventually put the handset back to his ear the line was dead. He tried redialling and got no answer.
He laid the phone down and sat for a while thinking. Then made his way to his marital bedroom.
Pressed his ear to the door, held his breath and listened.
He could hear ...something.
Biting his lip, he clasped the doorknob. White knuckled, he opened it a fraction and peered into the room. Then opened it wider as the shock of what he was seeing hit him fully. Rachel was thrashing against the ties.
Snapping teeth.
Growling.
Growling like a dangerous animal.
“Oh my Lord. Oh my Lord no, no.”
Words murmured under his breath.
The thing that had been his wife whipped her head to him at the sound of his voice.
Hissed.
Made a rumbling grunting sound that seemed to come from the back of her throat and deep within her chest. Lunged her head as far as her bindings would allow and frantically bit the air.
David retreated from the room.
Leaned his back against the closed door and attempted to control the trembling that coursed through him.
Fell to his knees, hands clasped tightly to his forehead.
He prayed for help.
Prayed for guidance.
Murmured the prayer.
Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. Lead us not into temptation. Lead us not into temptation. Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. Deliver us from evil.
Had no concept of how long he remained there, beseeching his god, trying to block the sounds from behind the door. Begging for a sign.
The chirping of his mobile phone slowly pierced the whirling confusion inside his head. A distant sound from downstairs. He staggered down. Fumbled the phone to his ear.
“David? David? Thank God. Is that you David?”
A female voice.
“Yes,” he whispered hoarsely.
He couldn’t place the voice. The gears of his mind were jammed and jumping. Tangled and stuck with the picture of the creature writhing on the double bed that he had shared for so many years with Rachel. Largely loveless years but shared years nonetheless.
“Angela?” He asked, disgusted by his own dismal hope.
“David? It’s Janet. Janet Ndogo. From St. Ambrose. Thank God you answered. I’ve called so many people. So many parishioners ...and so few have answered. So few have been spared.”
The last word slurred and intense.
Not Angela.
How ridiculous that he could have confused that rounded voice with the smoked sound of Angela.
Janet was the vicar of his church.
“Janet? Janet, what’s happening? What on earth is going on? My wife ...I can’t tell you. I don’t know what to do. Can you help me?”
He heard a loud bang from the street outside but ignored it, focusing on the phone.
“I know David, I know. You don’t have to tell me. Poor Rachel is one of the afflicted. One of the many. Poor Rachel. Poor unworthy Rachel. So few have answered. So few have been spared. I’m so glad that God has chosen you, so glad,” Janet said.
She sounded ...well ...as if she’d been drinking alcohol.
Which made no sense because Janet di
dn’t drink.
“The end of times David.
The day of judgement is upon us.
God has judged us and found us wanting.
Found us wallowing in sin like pigs in the dirt.
Glorying in filth instead of glorying in his name.
What’s happening? You may well ask.
I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you, although in your heart you know already.
Apocalypse.
Apocalypse is what’s happening.”
In his heart, David thought he had known, had understood on a level beneath his consciousness.
“What should I do?” He whispered in reply.
He’d wanted someone to answer that question for so long. So very long. Long before this present madness.
“Look to your heart David. Look for God in your heart and he will tell you what he wants. Look upon Rachel and witness his wrath.
See his divine retribution.
Look out of your window and see what has become of us.
We are more than cursed ...we have become the very beast in the field.”
She spoke as she always had, despite the slight slur to her speech. With utter conviction. With a knowing born of justified righteousness.
“I love you David. God loves you. God has blessed you.”
The line went dead.
<><><>
He sat there, confounded, emptied of rational thought, until he became aware of screams in the street.
Dazedly went to his front door.
Opened the dual locks and crept into his garden.
Parted the hedge to see the street and peered out. Branches prickling his hands and scratching his face.
A car had crashed further down the road. Somehow ended up bonnet-deep in a canted red post box. An old man and a younger woman had left it and were running past his house. The street was filling with creatures.
Things like Rachel. Popping into existence as if some diabolical conjurer were clicking his fingers.
As he watched, another figure appeared further up the road and shouted to the refugees from the car. Beckoned to them.
David knew him. Knew the shouter.
He lived in this street. A builder he thought. A big man. Burly in stature and blunt in personality. His house a hideous self-renovation, modernised to within an inch of its life, so much so that it stood out like a sorely swollen thumb in this leafy Sutton street. David hated that house. Hated its brash newness and presumptuous modernity.
The running things took the old man down easily. Like lions seizing the slowest antelope, ruthless and decisive. Too slow to outrun them, he fell beneath claws and teeth. Was ripped to pieces and the pieces eaten as David watched in horror. His mind stuttering to grasp what he witnessing. Demons were running riot on his sunny suburban street.
There’s a demon upstairs David. Poor unworthy Rachel. Lying in your unworthy bed.
The builder was armed with a length of metal. A long thick pipe. He ventured into the road and screamed at the woman to run. She was quicker than the old man, but they were coming from all directions now.
Animals scenting blood.
The man was heroic.
A gargantuan of the fall swinging that heavy metal cylinder. Two handed, a tubular broadsword, unsharpened and unforgiving.
A warrior at the end of times.
We are judged and judged to be beasts David.
The builder landed blows that would have left any normal man rolling in agony, would have crunched bones and broken limbs. These things slowed, fell at times, but staggered back up. Kept on hunting, fixated on their prey.
The woman nearly reached him.
A few feet away when she tumbled, shrieking, ankle folding at an obscene angle, her balance gone.
Hands outstretched to cushion her fall. She didn’t try to rise. Just screamed and screamed, peel after peel, an unholy call summoning things more unholy still.
They fell on her and attacked with barbaric abandon. Three of them. Four, five. Slashing and biting.
Feeding.
The man waded through the cluster that was gathering around her.
Ben, is his name Ben? Ben the builder. Ben the brash builder. With the wife that wears skirts so short that the imagination is beggared?
The metal weapon blurring as the man bludgeoned a path to her side. Bluntly hacked at demonic things.
Roaring and valiant.
Shattered one skull then another as he sought to clear them away.
Sheer numbers began to obscure him from view but not before David had chance to see one of the creatures turn from ripping at the woman and lunge blood painted jaws at the man’s groin. Fasten there with a death grip.
And then the builder was gone. Buried beneath them as they fought to feast on him.
See what has become of us ...we are become beasts.
The street was full of them and David suddenly became aware of how exposed he was.
Barefoot and defenceless.
A creature ran by, scant feet away from him, intent on the possibility of food. David backed away, back towards his house. Heard a noise that made him turn his head to the next door house.
Made him look upwards at the front bedroom of the neighbouring house.
What might once have been one of the Philby children crashed against the window, visibly shaking the glass and frame. Disappeared and moments later crashed into it again, hurled itself at it, creating a top to bottom crack in the double-glazed pane.
David ducked low and scuttled back to his open front door. Bolted inside and squeezed the door shut as quietly and quickly as he could.
Stood gasping and dizzy.
He ran upstairs, grabbing the remaining plastic ties from the table where he’d left them.
Stood outside Rachel’s door, glazed and terrified.
Nerved himself to enter.
She was straining her neck to her right hand, huge teeth bared, arm wrenching towards her mouth. He forced himself to go nearer, to reinforce the ties.
Double them. Treble them.
Forced himself to see her as she was.
Get thee behind me ...an offence unto me ...thou savourest not the things that be of God.
His face mere inches from her teeth.
Her hot spittle spattering his cheek. His nose full of the reek of her breath. Fetid and stewed, more like the miasma exuded by a swamp than the breath of a human being.
He stood back and looked at the blood dripping from his arms and hands where she’d caught him. So intent that he hadn’t noticed.
Nails like blades.
He backed away further towards the door and saw her nightdress had ridden up.
Exposed her in a way that she would never have dreamed of showing herself to him.
He stood sickly fascinated by her hairless sex. Distended and changed like the rest of her. Pulsing labia red and rippling like a lamprey’s mouth. Questing and hungry like the rest of her.
He felt himself stiffen with a sick desire that sent him fleeing from the room.
Outside, he fell to the floor weeping, bile bubbling from his lips, prayers spinning feverishly in his head.
<><><>
Ultimately, the decision to kill Rachel was God-given. The first time that God had spoken to him for so long that, until that point, David had thought he was lost forever to the Lord. And how much did he welcome a strong voice that chimed in tune with his own particular reality? Very much. Very much indeed.
Faith and reason in contradiction will always create a conflict and, to retain sanity, compromise has to be reached. The subtle abnegation of one or the other. Either Faith or Reason has to yield, one or the pair has to give some ground if they are to coexist. When the compromise proves elusive, the consequences are rarely pretty. A war of the rock and the hard place has casualties and few longterm winners. Compromise asserts itself with a persistence not unlike that of reality but without the urgency. Compromise sits at the back and doesn’t shout. Faith and Reason are loud fuck
ers, at the front, giving it large.
More times than not, they smother the sound of compromise.
Faith and Reason, they really do have a tendency to assert themselves. The assertion is sometimes quiet and nibbling. Sometimes it possesses the wailing screech of a banshee. Like sound, all of those assertions echo. Bouncing around, ululations of effect and consequence.
<><><>
It’s quite possible that David Monkton possessed an inclination towards insanity long before the collapse. He might well have ended up there without any apocalyptic event. That likelihood was certainly ringing a number of warning bells and growing in the probability stakes. Bluntly put, he’d taken a fair few steps down the well-worn road to madness, seemed to be travelling at a rare old clip, and gaining momentum into the bargain.
Murdering his infected, changeling wife moved his mental stability into an entirely new region. Picked up the pace on the insanity highway so as to speak. Arrived at insanity central in a burst of sweaty, stained acceleration.
The laborious rise and fall of the lump hammer, the rolling dedication of his arm as he pounded Rachel’s head to pulp. That act probably didn’t do a lot to improve his mental stability. More like a little packet of amphetamine for tired legs on the road to complete craziness.
On the brighter side, David was no longer lost.
God had spoken and told him what to do. Assisting Rachel on her journey into His loving embrace was the first directive. More instructions had been given and he had every intention of carrying them out.
David didn’t know if God would continue to speak to him and the not knowing didn’t concern him in the slightest. After so long in the wilderness, it was a joy to have direction again. Never mind that it had taken the end of days for him to find it.
God moved in mysterious ways after all.
As he towelled blood and gore from himself, something akin to a sense of peace enveloped him, a warm protective shroud that both eradicated uncertainty and provided purpose. He acted now with the surety and speed of those who have seen the light. And not any old light, the blinding brightness of divine revelation.
Ignoring what promised to be a warm day, he swiftly donned sturdy boots, heavy jeans and a padded waxed jacket that was thick whilst affording freedom of movement. He would be hot but he’d bear that for the possible protection that heavier clothing might afford.
Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse Page 14
