Urban yet green.
Simultaneously empty and crowded.
Full of what had happened and what might happen. Concrete flyover overhead and concrete pillars that he could touch if he ventured a few feet. Grass and trees in the distance, seen over those wavy metal barriers that looked deceptively weak. Weak enough for a kid to bend and break and play broad swords with.
No Turning Back on the Road.
That’s what he would have called it if he’d saved this little beautiful-baby-graphic on his machine as a finished piece of work after a few hours of exhilarated industry. Or maybe not, not these days, because like everything else, the title would go into review and off-shoot discussion. Ten, maybe twenty other suggestions would be thrown into the mix as the company, his fucking company by the way, maximised his potential. Sought to leverage the potential, gain some sunny-fucking-upside. One argument after another where people ceased to use English and for some reason started jabbering in senseless gibberish. Consider the strategic consequences, always consolidate the brand architecture’s structural foundation, blah-de-blah-blah. Emails that grew into huge strings of nonsense shit because everyone and his brother, and his brother’s dog, had input, had something to say, however incomprehensible. In the end, Joe would feel like the enemy instead of the fucking source and would simply agree to anything to stop the barrage of bullshit.
But it would have always have been that name in his head.
No Turning Back on the Road.
Because that was what it was.
There really was no turning back on the Road. There probably never had been for Joe, not after the first drink and the running began. Not once the course was set, scared of what was behind you and scared of where you’d end up. Not once you knew the questions and couldn’t find the answers. The questions would lead you on, down the road, and that bastard road and those bastard questions would just keep leading you on and on.
And if there were diversions, the diversions always ended up back on the road. Back with the questions.
Once the course was set, there was no turning back. Not on the run.
That’s right Joey-Joe. You run, don’t you? You run and run and run. You little running-boy you, you little speeding-boy you. Always in a rush to get to the finish and little thought for what you pass along the way. Or what you discard along the way.
You set your foot on this road a long old time ago, didn’t you? The running road. And your foot was always pressed to the metal wasn’t it? To be fair, you fecking space cadet, you’ve exceeded all the limits haven’t you?
Do you need to rest a little while?
He’d walked to the front of the Renegade and found Elliot there lost in thought, whatever passed for thoughts inside a young man’s head in days of dread and disaster.
Elliot looked at him as if he might be a mirage. Not real, a ghost of realness that the kid could pass his hand through to confirm the nagging doubt. Joe spoke from a distance that was as long as the years.
“When you find him, kiss him.”
Elliot looked at him, tense and questioning, like Joe wasn’t making sense, like he might have flipped under the pressure of it all. Joe didn’t care, one day Elliot might remember what he’d said and understand it.
“Kiss him for me.”
The boy nodded.
Joe smiled, the sadness so strong that he thought it wash him away. Wash him away like the tide. The tide that always rose, unforgiving and unrelenting.
The situation and the circumstance came back to him. He had to climb into the van. That was the immediate problem. The dreadful, dirty van. Walk away from Elliot and their dirty but still beautiful Jeep.
Walk the walk and talk the fucking talk Joe-Joe. No turning back and all that shit.
The doors were wedged shut, side windows shattered, jagged and rough. The passenger door was dented but clear of obstacle. Joe pulled and pushed and it finally squealed open.
The keys were hanging there in the dashboard, as he’d hoped.
He boosted himself in and squirmed over to the driver’s seat. Ignored the smell and the body parts. The filth and the wetness on his hands as he moved across that small space.
That’s gonna mess up your pants Joe-boy. Make it look like you’ve shit yourself along the way. Had a likkle accident dere boy, didn’t you?
The van started when he gunned the engine. He shoved it into reverse gear and endured the shriek of tortured metal and protesting engine as it tore loose.
Got past the Renegade and stopped.
Got out and left it blocking the road behind them.
It didn’t matter, there was no turning back. Not on the road.
There was no turning back on the road.
It was the moving shadow, Joe would think afterwards. The moving shadow. That was what Elliot reacted to.
And Jesus, Guru Nanak and Allah in the Great Barr, the kid was fast.
So alert and so fast.
He moved before the thing crashed onto the roof of the van. Clever movement, movement that put him in the best possible position. Had the kid learned that? Was it instinctive capability? Joe didn’t know the answer.
Elliot met the creature as it scrambled off the roof, skidding claws and ripping teeth. Met it with a sweep of the scythe and a sidestep that was all fast feet and core strength. The thing flew away, neck broken, head nearly severed from its body.
Elliot dipped and flowed upright.
Fluid and liquid ready.
Joe was running to the Renegade as they began to rain down from the overpass above.
A ruinous deluge, crunching and thudding against metal and tarmac as they landed.
It was a leg that caught him. One of their dirty bastard, deformed fucking feet. That was what he thought, although he didn’t know for sure. He thought it might have been a trailing foot that ripped his shoulder and arm. But it might have been a hooked claw or a desperately snapping jaw.
He hoped to God it was a claw. Not the mouth. That could be bad, oh so bad. Worse than bad.
And right at that moment, it didn’t really matter, he reached the Renegade door unaware of the river of blood that poured down his left arm. Just glad to have reached a temporary sanctuary from the storm that had enveloped them.
The kid blurred in the periphery of his vision, spinning up and spinning down, flashes of old metal and thickly alien blood. Dancing an old dance with the new wolves. A thin warrior of the fall, fighting skeletal foes from beyond the pale.
Don’t feck this up Joey. Not this time, not this one.
He fumbled the car into reverse, his arm oddly numb and cumbersome, uncoordinated and disobedient. Bumped back, hitting things as he leaned over and opened the passenger door with strangely unresponsive fingers. Slewed to a stop as Elliot struggled inside.
Then they were accelerating forward into the new gap that Joe had created, sliding through with inches to spare, picking up speed and following a twisting gradient upwards. A feeder road that led them out onto an elevated stretch that arrowed into the distance. Then, just as quickly, they were slowing. Coasting to a stop, just as Caroline had before him.
Up ahead, Joe saw the jam and the stuttering, ant-like activity around it. So many creatures that he didn’t try to estimate the number. He felt the same sick sense of disorientation and overload that had washed over Caroline. More than that, a sense of awe, a sense of adrenaline-charged witness, as though he’d been gifted, however horrible it might be, a sight that was unique. He tore his eyes away and inspected the road going the other way. Another snarl of traffic. No way forward, no possible way he was piloting them into that mass of creatures. And no way back, not along that way and not back down the feeder road. But they had to move.
No shit Joey-genius? Sitting here with your blood covered thumb up your hairy ringhole isn’t an option? Good to see that degree in the blatantly bleeding obvious wasn’t wasted.
The things that they’d just escaped would follow, would be on them before they knew it
. As Joe felt hope dwindling, leaving on a jet plane like the man once said, not sure when it would be back again, Elliot pointed out the right turning.
Joe took it without hesitation.
Followed the only road there was, followed it wherever it would lead.
<><><>
In what seemed like the bleary blink of a bloodshot eye, they came to the Hillstop Hotel. Joe didn’t even notice that the road continued, turned into a country lane. To him it looked like a dead end. By the time he’d pulled up in front of the main entrance, next to a dented and blood spattered Range Rover, the handle of the Renegade’s gear-stick was slippery with his blood.
“I don’t think we have a choice kid. Try to hide in there, get some shelter until they thin out, or fight it out here ...and I’ve had enough confrontation for the time being.”
Elliot twisted in his seat and scanned around them and then grunted his agreement. They got out and approached the entrance. Skirted the eviscerated remains of corpses like the commonplace horror that they’d become, mentally catalogued and then shelved after a cursory disgusted glance.
The doors to the hotel were locked. A crack visible in one them.
Of course they’re locked Joey-boy. What did you expect, a lucky break? You should know by now, ya dumb fuck, you mostly only get two kinds of luck ...none and hard. Hahaha.
He was giving serious consideration to trying to find another way in, or possibly asking Elliot to smash the cracked glass, when they saw murky movement behind the doors. A figure that approached them, other figures indistinct behind it.
A young woman. She fiddled with locks and opened a door.
An angelically beautiful girl-woman.
A whispered invitation to come in, strain etched across her features, her eyes alert and fearful.
Inside, they were met by four more people, the most immediately striking of which was an emotionless black guy with a handgun. The gun was pointed at them, and the instruction to stay exactly where they were was uttered in a cold and undeniable tone.
Not surprisingly, that became the focus. He demanded their full attention. The big guy with hard eyes and cool voice ...and the gun held almost casually in his hand.
The three others, a woman and two men, drifted away from him like smoke caught in a draft, armed with as assortment of metal, tense-faced and jittery looking. They moved around Joe and Elliot and helped Angel-girl relock the entrance. They were peripheral to Joe, the gun and the man holding it was the main event, the showstopper.
Hey Joey-Joe, bleeding baby Joe, What do you think he makes of your rusty machete and the kid’s antique farming implement? Do you think those little babies are warming the cockles of his stone-cold heart?
The entrance secured as best they could, the other four pulled back from the glass, uncertainly switching their attention between the newcomers and the outside world. They struck Joe as nervy, their actions careful and considered, conversation muttered and minimal. Maybe not that surprising in the circumstances, but he was too tired to fuck around for too much longer, gun-toting stranger or not. He was about to try employing some of his rapidly-depleting supply of charm when the beautiful girl with the big, haunted eyes spoke.
“Pearcey, go easy man, he’s hurt. Look at his arm.”
Joe guessed that the guy with the gun had already clocked the fresh blood all over him.
“They’re out there again, not as many yet, but they’re definitely coming.”
This from the other woman. She struck Joe as fairly unremarkable, decent legs though. Oddly mismatched trainers and pencil skirt.
His mind was wandering. Maybe he was losing it, flaking out and flipping reality the bird as he went. Maybe it was blood loss, or maybe just plain old come down after the adrenaline high of the attack on the road. Joe glanced at Elliot. The kid didn’t meet his eyes, but Joe sensed that Elliot was poised, on the edge of movement.
“Were you bitten?”
Asked by the older of the other two men, as equally unremarkable as Trainers with Pencil Skirt. But cold eyes and a face that looked like it smiled when cars crashed.
“No. One of those bastard things caught me with a claw,” Joe replied.
“We ran into a jam on a feeder road back there and then ...well, then it all just went to shit. Got swarmed by some of them and this was where we ended up. Kind of ran out road and I didn’t want to backtrack, not with what was behind us. Plus I needed to stop ...worried I might pass out at the wheel.”
“We don’t want any trouble.” Elliot ventured.
Looking at the Angel Girl as he said it, the scythe clutched in his hand, a mute contradiction to his voice.
The big man, Pearcey, lowered the gun, made it disappear inside his jacket like it had never been in his hand in the first place.
“Sorry, we’re all a bit ...jumpy.”
<><><>
It was Pearcey who disinfected and dressed Joe’s wound.
The girl with the gorgeous face, Adalia as it turned out, stood in attendance with Elliot. Watching the wound being dressed and watching each other.
“That’s the best I can do with what we’ve got,” Pearcey said.
The man settled back on his heels, peeling off disposable gloves that he’d found in a first aid kit.
“It’s quite nasty but I guess you’ll live. I sealed it the best I can. You’ll have to be careful not to reopen it. And keep an eye out for infection. I cleaned it pretty well but you never know, could do with antibiotics really ...”
The big man shrugged and left the rest unsaid.
“I’ll see if I can get an appointment at the doctors on Monday,” Joe said with a weary smile.
“I’d try Accident and Emergency but I heard that they’re experiencing staffing issues. I take it you’re not a qualified doctor then? Oh, and by the way, cheers.”
Pearcey raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement and twitched the ghost of a smile. Joe thought there was something likeable about the guy, despite his apparent tendency to draw guns on people.
“No, not a doctor, not a veterinary nurse ...not even a fucking dentist. No medical qualifications at all to speak of. But I vaguely remember my way round a field dressing. And I guess once you learn the art of improvisation, the skill never leaves you.”
<><><>
Adalia and Elliot fell into a whispered conversation as they watched Pearcey administer to Joe. They drifted away as the two men started talking, moved closer to the windows to join the others who were monitoring the activity outside.
“Stay back, they’re all over the place.” Sault’s voice hissed.
In a hushed tone, Adalia made Elliot aware of her opinion of Sault. That muted communication almost certainly contained the words trust, asshole and don’t. Although not necessarily in that order.
The scene outside was oddly hypnotic, frightening yet compulsive. Observing a dangerous new species from a blind, and all the time knowing that the blind offered no protection.
Four, then five creatures, moving with a slow alertness. Other than the general shape and the vestiges of clothing on some, there was very little left about those things that was human. Mutated parodies of people, thin and hard silhouettes that evoked a sense of wrongness. A feeling low down in the gut that something alien and deeply unsettling was being witnessed.
One of creatures leapt onto the roof of the Renegade and slowly dipped and turned its bald head, mouth working, chewing air as if frustrated. Seemed to stare at them through the smoked glass and then dropped lithely to the ground and loped closer to the building. Behind it, more creatures appeared.
Predatory skeletons.
“Shit, I’m really, really sorry. I think this is our fault. I think they followed us,” Elliot whispered.
“Maybe, but don’t fret it,” Adalia replied.
She gave his arm a squeeze, her breath moist on his cheek.
“We were gonna leave this morning but they were here then as well. Lots of them, like they know there’s someone round he
re but can’t figure out where.”
Another creature joined the first at the glass, prowling along the windows. Both of them attentive, twitching head movements and jittery jaws.
And the numbers behind continued to grow, several settling by the cars, more hunkered by bushes and shrubs. Occasionally picking at the sticky remains of the corpses on the ground. More still moving about the area in between and around those. Roaming and hunched, seemingly aimless yet ready.
The survivors edged back to the kitchen, when they thought it safe to move, leaving Adalia and Elliot to keep watch.
<><><>
The day wore on.
The creatures remained in attendance, swirling outside like an insectile swarm, their density fluxing and flowing but never dropping below a level that was daunting. A nomadic, nightmare troupe of monstrous irregulars stalking their temporary encampment. Prowling and squatting, and then prowling again. Paused at this short-term resting spot, a place chosen for reasons known only to them, waiting for whatever they waited for.
Paused but impatiently poised for the mysterious signal that would pass amongst them, a sweetly bitter rumour of fresh meat and hot juice, an enigma communication, coded for minds of a new order.
Adalia and Elliot sat sentinel, swapping stories in words breathed more than spoken, finding an unexpected comfort in each other’s presence despite the ever present threat that shadowed both the grounds beyond the glass, and the thoughts in their heads.
The others exchanged their own stories of the collapse, with varying degrees of detail and veracity, in the metal-edged confines of the kitchens. Edited snatches of story, truncated tales of journeys, experiences and encounters that were surreal in their horror and yet ordinary in their smallness.
Later, as the sun dipped below the horizon in a blast of beautiful sky, a spectacular display that was somewhat spoiled by the ferine figures hovering around the hotel, Sault stealthily approached Adalia and Elliot. The first they knew of his presence was the sibilant hiss of voice as he informed them that they were relieved, he would stand watch in their place. Adalia was so surprised that she had to stifle a small scream. Sault apologised for startling her, that secretly amused look loitering around his eyes, the look of a flasher about to reveal himself.
Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse Page 47
