by Tim Lebbon
“Well help us understand-” Paul began, but Blane cut him off.
“I can’t, because I don’t understand it myself. My memory stretches back only to encompass my time in nature. I can’t remember childhood, or parents, or family. Nothing. Only sitting in woods, wandering around fields, loving nature and feeling a part of it. Until today. Now, everything’s alien. Even you.” He half smiled, taking away any offence implied in his last statement.
“Who is this woman? What the hell could she have to do with what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. She’s strange, familiar, but not as she is now. It’s as though I knew her in another life … I have memories … It’s difficult.”
“Try.”
Blane took another swig of water, washed it around his mouth as though tasting truths in its mountain-spring falseness. “She’s hardly normal, barely human. Sounds foolish, I know, but it’s how I perceive her. She had these chains, bolted into her temples. They go into her mouth. I’m sure they hold something.”
“Oh, hey, this is getting weird,” Holly said. “And besides anything, what the hell has she got to do with killing people in their sleep and hordes of animals suddenly eating us alive?”
Blane stared at her. He could not answer, because he did not know the facts. But he knew the truth. “Something,” he said.
The door to the ladies opened and Peer and Mary emerged. Spike trotted at their heels.
“I think maybe we should lose the dog,” Paul said abruptly. “After what’s happened in the last few hours, I don’t want him suddenly turning on one of us.”
“Spike goes, I go,” Mary said.
Go then, thought Blane, but he said: “Keep him close to you, Mary. We’ll keep an eye on him. Tell the truth, he helped me.”
“Good dog,” Mary said, patting his head. Something rumbled in his throat, a growl or a grumble of pleasure.
The five of them stood that way for a moment, and then Holly spoke up. “So, what do we do?”
“Keep moving,” Paul said. “Arm ourselves, if we can. Look for help.”
“Guns won’t do much against the likes of that,” Holly said, nodding through the large window at the service buildings.
“It’s not only that,” Blane said. “We found those bodies.”
Silence. Even Mary looked worried. She stroked her dog like a comfort charm.
“Who do you think did it?” Paul asked. Blane could see the question in his eyes. Her?
“No idea. But I’d bet they’re not the only murdered people lying around today.” He shrugged at Paul.
“Why do you say that?” said Peer. “That’s a horrible thought.”
“It’s the three-meal scenario,” Paul cut in. He popped open a bottle of water and slaked his thirst before going on. “You heard it? Take away three straight meals from the population, and you’ve got anarchy. Basically, if normality slips sideways, for whatever reason, so does society. Falls from the knife edge; some of the people will impale themselves on the spikes beneath. Other will climb back up.”
“I can’t believe that,” Holly said. “People are basically good.”
“Sure they are,” Peer said. “But in Newport this morning, a man fired a shotgun at me. He was wandering the streets naked. I saw him blow a dead driver’s brains out. And there was the fire. Something that big must have been started on purpose. It can’t have been just a coincidence.”
“One man,” Holly said. “Not everyone, surely. Us? We’re all right. We’re helping each other.”
“And what happens if there’s one car and two groups of people who need it?” Blane said. “Would you shoot someone for it?”
“Of course not!” Holly scoffed. Paul shook his head. Peer averted her gaze from them all, and Mary simply stared.
“Then eventually – if this turns worse, and there’s no outside help for a long time – you’d succumb. You’d die.”
“Because I won’t shoot someone for a car?”
“No. Because eventually, you’d be faced with that choice over food. Or clean water. Or medical supplies. Things run out. Things decay.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Mary said.
“Survival of the most vicious,” Holly mumbled.
“Both.” Blane began grabbing chocolate bars and crisps and canned drinks, dropping them into a carrier bag. “But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Help me grab some food, then we go.”
“What about June?” Peer asked. “We can’t just leave her there. We’ve got to … bury her. Or something.”
There was silence. None of the group wanted to say no, though they were all thinking it. There were so many bodies, and the false promise they were all labouring under was that they would send back help.
“Okay.” Peer said quietly. “Okay. So, where do we go now?” She bit her upper lip.
“Any objections to London?” Nobody answered. It was not because Blane’s idea was good, it was just that there were none better.
Blane wondered whether the woman was already ahead of them, planning the next atrocity. And in an instant of clear thought, he decided to try to fool her if she was. They would turn south-west, away from London, down into the country. She would not be expecting that.
Take her by surprise, as she had done to them over the last twelve hours.
They took two cars. At first, Blane wanted them all in the Mondeo. It would be uncomfortable and cramped, he acknowledged, but he felt that they would be safer together. There was a large boot for food and other supplies, and it was the newest car. But Holly had insisted that she take her Mini. What if the Mondeo broke down? she asked. And Paul had volunteered to travel with her, much to Mary’s amusement. Blane had agreed, eventually, though he could barely see them all in the Mini if anything did happen to the big Ford.
They stocked up on food and drink from the garage in the services, not wanting to venture back into the main buildings. Other creatures had already started showing an interest in the car park: carrion birds pecking at their dead cousins; a family of foxes sniffing at the edges of the pile of dead birds. Even a pack of pet dogs gone feral, which Spike growled at but wisely did not approach.
They pulled back onto the motorway, Peer driving the Mondeo with Blane in the front, Mary and Spike in the back. Holly drove her Mini while Paul sat next to her, slowly stroking the many plasters on his face and neck. He was starting to feel as though he had a massive dose of chicken pox, and each slight cut was a spot aching to be picked. The pain was a heavy overall glow, always there, always ready to cut in with a sharp reminder if he shifted position the wrong way or rubbed the wrong plaster. In truth, he felt like a human punch bag. His back and limbs were heavy and aching from the impact in his dream, his left shoulder seemed almost to have seized up.
“Where the hell does he think we’re going to find guns?” Holly asked.
Paul shrugged. “I think he was thinking farm buildings and the like. Shotguns. Though I don’t much fancy venturing near any farms for a while.”
“Why?”
“Large concentration of animals.”
Holly was silent for a while. “Just what the fuck is going on?” It was rhetorical, and Paul did not grace it with another uninformed guess.
They drove in silence, Peer keeping them to below seventy, though the roads were almost completely empty. Once, a big BMW passed them, doing at least one hundred and twenty, youths waving bottles of spirits from the side windows, jeering, giving them the bird.
“Can you believe that?” Holly asked.
“Blane’s knife edge,” Paul said. “People act differently. At least they weren’t waving guns.”
“But they’ll kill themselves. Where are the police? Where do you think they are, Paul?”
He reached over and placed a big hand on her left knee. It was an unconscious gesture, born of a need for contact and comfort, and Holly did not visibly react. So he kept it there. “That’s been worrying me a lot,” he said. “A hell of a lot.”
&n
bsp; After a while: “So, are you going to share your worries with me, mister?” Holly took one hand from the wheel and squeezed Paul’s, briefly. Then she lit a cigarette and waited for him to talk.
“Think about it. Something happens to people when they’re asleep. Everyone has seen it, this morning. From the numbers of people around, it seems that it happened to everyone who was asleep.”
“You survived.”
He flexed his shoulders and winced. “I landed in a snow drift. Freak occurrence. It has happened, I’m sure, but how many people fall from great heights and survive?”
Holly did not answer.
“So, all those who were asleep last night are now dead.”
“Oh God.” The full implications, the statistics involved, hit Holly. She swerved across the road until Paul’s hand squeezed slightly and she brought the car back on course. They could see Peer staring at them in her rear-view. Paul raised one hand, thumbs up.
“How many?” she asked.
“I just don’t know. If there’re sixty-odd million people in Britain, how many of them sleep through the night? Who can tell? There are lots of night-jobs, people who wouldn’t have been sleeping last night, for various reasons. Insomniacs. Night people. But say half? Thirty million?”
Holly shook her head, her face pale, knuckles white where she grasped the wheel. “So where are the other half today? Why aren’t the roads full? No, must be a lot more than that. Fifty, I reckon. Fifty million people. Fifty …”
“That’s only if it’s happened everywhere,” Paul cut in. “It may be localised. It may just be here, South Wales and the South West.”
“But the phone call to London.”
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah. There is that.”
“The emergency services are always there at night. Where are they now?”
Paul shrugged. “I just don’t know, Holly. No idea. Maybe they just quit?”
The thought was sobering, chilling. “Peer said she saw fire engines fighting the fire in Newport.”
“Good. I hope they still are.”
“But the roads are dead.” Holly’s turn of phrase was more than appropriate.
They drove in silence. Paul tried the radio several times and swept through all the medium wave and FM bands, but found mostly static. One station seemed to be broadcasting God Save The Queen on a continuous loop, with no broadcaster intrusion. Another, for some strange reason, was playing and replaying Goodbye T’Jane, by Slade.
“Think the Queen’s bought it?” he said. “Thinks Noddy Holder’s still alive?” Holly did not reply.
It was almost five o’clock when they approached the junction with the M4 and M5. The Mondeo indicated left long before.
“I thought we were going to London?” Holly said.
Paul looked up. “They’re heading left. Midlands or South West, do you think?”
“Let’s flash them to stop. I want to know what’s going on, it’s not fair them making decisions without us.” Paul nodded. Holly flashed the Mondeo and slowed down.
Peer seemed keen not to stop. Holly braked, and the Mondeo came to a halt further ahead on the slip road. It reversed back to them and pulled up on their left. Peer’s window was open, and Paul wound his down.
“I thought London?” Holly called across.
Blane stared at Paul intently. “I thought we should go south west, Somerset and Devon. Maybe Cornwall.”
“Why?” Paul was trying to read the signal he was sending.
“Just in case,” Blane said. “Don’t want any more surprises.”
If he could not say what was on his mind, it was because of Peer or Mary. The latter sat in the back of the Mondeo, patting the dog, humming quietly to herself.
“Right,” Paul said. “We’ll follow you.”
Blane nodded. Peer pulled off quickly.
“Hey!” Holly shouted. “What the fuck is this, misogynists incorporated?”
“Holly, he’s got a reason,” Paul said. “Calm down. It’s the woman.”
“What? How do you know?”
“He didn’t want to say anything because of Mary. Maybe Peer, too. I think he wants to do the least obvious thing in case that weird woman of his has set up any nasty surprises on the way to London.”
“She’s following him,” Holly said.
“Seems that way.”
“So why are we as well?” Paul did not answer. Holly continued: “If there’s some fucked up weirdo following him and setting … traps … why the hell are we still tagging along with him? Wouldn’t we stand a better chance on our own?”
Paul stared straight ahead at the receding rear of the Mondeo. It was on the slip-road and starting to swing right, and in a few seconds it would be out of sight, crossing the M4 and heading south. He looked across at Holly. “Safety in numbers.”
Holly slipped into gear and moved off, saying nothing. For the next thirty seconds, she could have gone either way. Paul sensed her inner struggle in the motion of the car, a stress in the steering which perhaps was a translation of her own doubts. They approached the final point at which she could go straight on – London – or mount the ramp taking them towards the South West.
They took the ramp.
Paul suddenly wondered whether she was right. Would they be safer on their own? Let Blane get on with his own strange stuff, when the world had gone bad enough already? He leant across, gasping as pain flushed through his body, and kissed Holly on the cheek. She smiled shyly.
“My, on our first date, as well.”
“You’ve already shown me your boobs.”
They both laughed. It felt good.
The landscape changed. Not just geographically, as they passed through the huge conurbation of Bristol and its satellite towns, but physically. It felt all wrong.
On distant hillsides trees squatted like waiting armies, twisting without any apparent breeze, limbs scoring the sky. Hedgerows splashed out of line, spreading their wild contagion across newly planted crops and creeping along the ploughed furrows of virgin fields. The growth was unnatural, extraordinary, and seemed to expand and eat up space even as the cars passed by.
The sense of things changed as well. The sunlight began to fade, but faster than usual, swallowed by the land and denied the natural death it was used to. Darkness was smearing the horizon by seven o’clock, and stars spotted the sky even though a vague, resilient blueness still remained. The moon appeared, proud and arrogant in its fullness, already imparting its borrowed light and silvering the landscape. Yet light remained, slumped into valleys and hanging low over the ground like a morning mist. It gave the impression of a freeze-frame snapshot of the landscape, with the residue of a lightning flash just fading into darkness near the ground and night-time already swallowing the upper atmosphere.
Peer indicated and left the motorway, followed by the Mini. The cars stopped on the hard shoulder just before the exit roundabout. Blane jumped from the Mondeo. His expression was stern, worried.
“I think we should find somewhere to spend the night,” he said when he came to the Mini. “We’ll eat, talk. Watch out for each other, make sure none of us sleeps.”
“It’s going to be a long night,” Paul said, leaning across and resting his elbow on Holly’s shoulder.
Blane nodded. “We’ll have to find something to do. Something to keep us all occupied. I reckon we should look for a farmhouse, may find some guns there as well.”
“What about the animals?”
Blane did not answer. He shrugged.
“Lead the way.”
They drove into the country, took several smaller roads and passed through a seemingly deserted village. Cars remained parked in driveways. Lights still burned in some houses, but silence reigned everywhere. Peer stopped and tooted, Blane shouting that they were here to help, don’t be afraid, come out. But no one showed their face, no curtains twitched. It must have been a peaceful village, once. No cause not to sleep at nights. Moonlight reflected from cottage windows, giving t
hem the impression of being lit from within by a ghostly radiance. One window hung open, its clasp being scraped back and forth across the sill by the slight breeze which had come with the night. It added to the haunted atmosphere of the village, a creaking door in a spooky mansion.
They moved on and soon left the village behind. They turned from the road onto a lane, which itself slowly grew plants and ruts and degenerated into a mud track. The Mondeo bounced and threw exploratory beams of light forward, but the Mini began scraping its belly along the ridged central part of the road. Holly guided the offside wheel into the centre and drove with one side of the car constantly scraping along the rough stone wall abutting the track.
After a while the lane opened up suddenly and, silhouetted against the near-dark sky, a farmhouse marked its end. The cars stopped; they left the lights on, bathing the buildings with their brash luminescence.
Blane and Peer climbed wearily from the Mondeo.
There was a noise from one of the farmyard sheds and a huge shape, black against the darkness, rushed out towards them.
A gunshot barked out. A flash lit the scene.
Blane and Peer fell.
22. Forgotten Ideas and Dead Roots
In the fading light she could see everything.
Fay passed across fields, leaving newly-ploughed furrows in her wake. She parted hedges, sending twigs and leaves and startled creatures pattering down in a living rain. Once she would have done this without interacting with the landscape, transferring herself from one place to the next with little more than a shrug and a smile. She was a breeze in the hair, the glint from a corner of the eye, a forgotten idea in the morning. She had moved but not flowed, remaining a constant wherever she went. Now, everything had changed. She flowed so quickly that nothing could keep up with her, making her mark and scarring nature as it had scarred her. She told herself she had a choice, to make an impression or not. But inside she knew the truth: that this was the only way for her to move, because she was failing. Slowly, like the world around her, she was changing. Shifting away from what she had been, passing the thing she had become and heading off towards some unknown, distant horizon.
