Vampires Overhead

by Alan Hyder

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He was . . . Oh, Garry. He was mad! I’m sure he’s gone mad. I saw his eyes. He was waiting behind the door, and when I came out he hit me with his gun.’

  ‘Hit you with a gun?’

  ‘Yes. I saw it raised. But I was too scared to scream.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I was being sick. I felt awful. Being sick as if I was on a rough sea. I’m always sick when it’s rough.’

  ‘Yes? What do you mean about being at sea?’

  ‘I was tied down on to that barrow. It was rocking and bumping about. Bingen was pushing it down the hill. Running! We had turned out of the main road and reached the public-house where you found him before I felt better.’

  ‘He knocked you out and then carted you off on the barrow? Bingen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But . . . But . . .’

  ‘Oh, I tell you.’ Janet beat her hands together. ‘He’d tied that blue scarf, the one I got to tie round your side, over my mouth. He pulled me off the barrow and carried me down into the cellar. Garry, he . . . he . . . Oh, Garry, you’ve got to go and kill him.’

  ‘You mean he . . .?’

  Janet buried her head in my shoulder, and shook with sobs. I stared vacantly at the wall over her hair. Her arms about me, though I did not know, loosened the bandage round my body. It slipped from the wound. For a long time we did not speak.

  ‘How did you get away?’

  Janet did not answer for a while, and then her sobs broke out afresh.

  ‘I had to . . had to . . . make out I liked him to . . .’

  The kettle, boiling noisly on the stove, brought me out of my stupor, and I forced strong black tea, reeking with brandy, upon her. At first, then she gulped thirstily. I poured out more, holding her in my arms until at last she slept.

  With Janet sound asleep from the spirits, the barricade set safely in place so that it could only be opened from inside, and a note upon her pillow that, whatever happened, she was to stay in the valley until I came back, I set off in the dawn light to find Bingen.

  A bandoleer of cartridges slung over my shoulder, under my arm a rifle, and upon my hip a revolver. Climbing from the valley it seemed I rose to the stars, dimming in the morning. My head was light, swimming. The loosened bandage let my shirt glue with congealed blood to my side, and down my chin trickled a little stream of blood where my teeth bit into my lip. One purpose lifted me exultantly, banished weakness, swung me down the long slope. A refrain burned into my brain to the oblivion of everything else.

  Bingen must be killed! Killed! Bingen must be killed!

  The bandoleer thumped out the words on my shoulder and the revolver on my hip.

  Bingen must be killed. Be killed. Bingen must be killed. Killed!

  The sun came to banish the comet’s rosy glow, stars shone coldly, disappeared, the world was peopled with rushing shapes, looming out of the burned trees, crouching in roadside ditches. Leaving the main road, I turned towards the public-house where Bingen . . . Bingen. Bingen must be killed. Killed. My hot eyes smarted, so that blindly I staggered, left the road, stumbled into the ditch, climbed out, forced myself onwards. White-hot anger, vengeance, blinded me, while it carried me forward.

  The inn was empty. I tore it to pieces. A mouse could not have gained sanctuary there, while I searched. Not once did I call. Time enough to call when I saw him, was close enough to whisper, not shout, that he was to die.

  On the road outside, I stared to the east and the west. Which way? Which way? Unconsciously reason led me. Bingen was drunk. He must have been drunk when he had abducted Janet. He would have drank again, remembering what he had done. He would come from the cellar, stand, glass in hand, grinning drunkenly, to watch Janet fly sobbing away. Then he would drink and go. Go, knowing that I would pursue. Janet had come back to the valley. Bingen would go away from it. Janet had run west, Bingen’s drunken feet would stumble east.

  The road east stretched before me.

  All that day, without a pause, I walked, blindly, following the sun, with the refrain hammering into my brain. I do not know where or how I went. Evening drew in and I marched, dropped, rose and marched again. Delirious, the wound in my side throbbing, one thought forcing me on like an automaton. At times, I thought of Janet, and I think then, my steps, circling all unknowingly, retraced towards the valley where she waited. Night passed, a time of dropping to lay unconscious, rising to march on, stumbling in the dark amid burned stumps of trees and roadside hedges.

  Gradually, faintly, sanity returned. I must quarter the whole of England until I found Bingen. But Janet! She must be cared for. I must care for Janet during the day, and during the night Bingen must be sought. Found! Killed!

  The sun slid redly over the horizon, and I turned from it to make for the valley, and although I turned, red haze in my eyes convinced me I still stared straight into the sun. Marching, staggering through a blood-red mist. The road danced beneath me, the country swam, as now and again it came clear into focus out of the red mists. Bingen was to be killed! The light of day was blood red. Bingen was killed. I had killed Bingen.

  Blindly, I walked along the winding, undulating road in the dead world. The bandoleer on my shoulder grew heavy beyond bearance. I cast it from me. The rifle had already gone. My fingers fumbled at the revolver at my hip, but I could not pull it from its holster. I left it there, forgot it. Red-hot knives stabbed into my side. My wound bled again, and I stopped to stare wonderingly at red drops falling into the dust at my feet.

  The road was endless, but I prayed, and miraculously it shortened, neared the valley, and then, when I rose to the crest to call down for Janet, it fell away into the distance, winding, undulating, never ending, stretching ahead for ever. I had to get to Janet. I must get back to Janet. I forgot Bingen. Tore the red-hot bandages from my side, walked on with the cool air playing about the wound, the drip of blood passing unnoticed as I swung along home to Janet.

  Suddenly, I was in an orchard, and in my ears the raucous cawing of rooks, and above that the sound of shooting. I was a boy again. They were shooting rooks. A little boy, running late for school. I heard the crack of the cane as the master hit his tall desk, and on my shoulder came a blow. I fell headlong in the dusty road.

  I opened my eyes in the dust, lying flat upon my face. It was as though someone kicked at my shoulder, for my left arm jerked as it lay outstretched. I could not stop it. Fingers twitched. The new pain in my shoulder eased the pain in my side. I did not feel that now, and blood cleared from my brain and eyes. The red mist went, and cold clear consciousness doused me, drenching away the delirious coma.

  I knew! Realized what had happened.

  During that disordered pursuit of the night and the previous day, I had passed Bingen as he slept. I lay in the road unmoving, puzzling it out. Staggering blindly back to Janet I had run into Bingen as he fled, not expecting to see me approaching from the direction I did. He had shot me.

  Cautiously, I raised my head to peer along the road. It fled away emptily. Bingen had gone. Pulling myself into a sitting position, I felt with gently probing fingers at my shoulder. Close to my armpit the bullet had gone in and, slightly higher under the bone of my arm, gone out at the back. It bled but sparsely, and I wondered how long ago Bingen had fired the shot.

  Upon my feet I swayed, trembling with anger, then went unsteadily along the road, searching. Retracing my steps, I saw how, all unknowing, I had been descending a hill when Bingen had shot me. If I could reach the summit of the hill quickly, I might stare over the country with range enough to bring him in view.

  Speedily as I could, I went up the slope until the country lay beneath me like a map, and it was void of any moving thing. Towards the river, land rose, and I could not see far, but nothing moved to catch my eye.

  I pivoted, and away to the right, running, crouched close to the ground, I saw Bingen.

  He must have circled after shooting, and seeing me fall, then out in
the fields, seen me surmount the hill to stand foolishly on the skyline. He dived for a ditch, traversing the meadow in which he ran. He did not know I saw him, for not once did he glance back. I ran weakly to where I might head him off, when he tried to regain the road.

  As swift as I could, I ran, assuming that once Bingen thought he had left me behind, he would leave the fields. Then, through the hedge, I saw him. He stopped. Staring back up the hill, and, crouching, so that I was hidden by the thin hedge, I ran past. Soon, he would come on to the road. He would meet me.

  Ahead, I waited hidden by the hollow bole of a burned oak, peering to where, waist high in mustard weed, Bingen walked towards the road. I wanted to call. Wanted to let him know that I waited, and when, in a few moments he pushed through the hedge, I did, stepping from behind the tree.

  We watched each other awhile. I went slowly towards him. The rifle he carried went to his shoulder.

  ‘Get back, Garry! You can’t do anything against this gun.’

  ‘Bingen! You know what I want you for.’

  ‘Yes. I know. You’re wanting me for taking my share of the salvage. I’ve taken it. I told you I would. There’s nothing you can do now. Get to hell out of my way and let me go on.’

  ‘You’re not going on, Bingen.’

  ‘Huh! Who’s stopping me?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re ill, Garry. I can see that. You know I’m a good shot. Get out of the way. Before God, I’ve half a mind to plug you and go back and take your half of the salvage. That revolver’s not any good against this gun. Stop!’

  As he spoke, I had been moving nearer. I stopped and waited.

  ‘You want to tell me anything?’ I asked him softly. My ears drummed so that I could hardly hear his reply. A red mist outlined Bingen, converging him towards the revolver clenched tight in my hand. I knew I could not miss. ‘You want to tell me anything?’

  ‘I want to tell you, damn all. Get out! Get the hell out of this!’ Bingen snarled nervously. ‘Damn you! I’ve got nothing on you. Get away, and you’ll be all right. Get out!’

  ‘Bingen. You’re going to crack. You always do, when it comes to the show-down. You dirty yellow dog. Your nerve’s going. It’s gone.’

  ‘Damn you! Get away. You know what happened? It’s done. Nobody can undo it. We saved the girl. We saved her, I tell you. You took her. And then, damn and blast you, I took her.’ Bingen’s voice rose thinly, cracked. He spoke pleadingly, softly, trying to reason. ‘Garry! Get out of my road. I’m going through. I don’t want to kill you, but . . . Stop! Keep back. I’ll pull this damned trigger.’

  The rifle cuddled into his shoulder, shook, steadied, and shook again. Sticking from his pocket a bottle with yellow whisky glinted in the sunlight. His eyes bleared, red, half-shut, buried in his cheeks as he grimaced.

  He cried, and shot as I walked towards him.

  He loomed out of a red mist which isolated him from the rest of the world. I heard the bullet from his gun hum past my head, whine into the distance as I went slowly towards him, knowing I was safe.

  Again he shot, and this time the bullet spurted dust about my feet. He pulled the trigger frantically, uselessly, until he had emptied the chamber, flung his rifle to the ground and screamed, raised fists, either in prayer or maniacal fear. And then suddenly he calmed.

  Steadily he faced my approach, pulled the bottle from his pocket, drank deeply, dashed it to the ground, and watched the liquid vanishing in the dust of the road. When he looked at me again I was nearly close enough to touch him. He spoke softly, trembling.

  ‘Go on, Garry! Go on!’

  The revolver, looming monstrously in my hand, grown curiously to giant size, recoiled sharply once, twice.

  Bingen twitched in the dust of the road as I stood over him.

  Pain in my shoulder moved me at last, and the red mist returned to my eyes, blinding me, changed to water, so that as I stumbled away I had to wipe tears from my cheeks. The road lifted, heaved, and I walked into black unconsciousness.

  I wakened on the hill close to the valley to find myself, as Janet had done, upon the barrow, but I was ascending. Janet had descended . . . into hell.

  Waiting in the valley, Janet had obeyed my orders for the first day, and on the second, when I did not return, ventured over the hills towards The Blue Anchor, heard shooting in the distance, came running to find me in the road, returned to the inn for the barrow, and heaved and pulled my unconscious form on to it. She had not seen Bingen. I must have walked some distance from him.

  I regained consciousness at the bottom of the slope ascending to our valley soon after she had realized the impossibility of hauling the heavy barrow up the long hill unaided. With her arm about me, I walked home.

  The wound in my side festered, but the shoulder gave hardly any trouble. A month I lay in the cave, and for the first few days was delirious, with Janet keeping a fire going and applying hot fomentations. Later, recovered, I went out to find Bingen and give him a kind of burial.

  Bingen is dead, and yet . . . I think that Bingen will live with us in the future.

  XI

  The Future!

  THE FUTURE! What does it hold?

  Seven months have passed away since first I heard Janet screaming among the asbestos boards. Seven months! In some twelve months’ time I hope to be able to start a search for other survivors, a patrol of the land from east to west, from north to south. Seven months ago, when I thought Janet a child, and now she is going to introduce a newcomer into this burned, drained land!

  The land is free of Vampires. They have gone. Who knows if they will return? Four months have passed since we saw the last of them, a last glimpse of a visitation from some other form of life, flying so high in the heavens we could not be certain they were Vampires.

  Life is covering traces of their visit with a lush curtain of green. Life in the land has started again. Birds have built in the eaves of our cottage, and our chickens have increased in numbers from when first I brought the gaunt survivors from The Blue Anchor. There are more cats than we have managed to tame, so that many run wild, spitting when we near them, and out of the blue has come to us a gaunt old mongrel, destined, I think, to be the ancestor of all the dogs in the land . . . when he finds a mate. That he will, I am sure, for when later the four of us leave our home here in the valley to begin our search, we will discover other survivors from the holocaust and the Vampires.

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