by Tim Lebbon
Never.
“Humour me, then,” Paul said. “Arrange to meet us somewhere in a day or two. It’ll make me happier. And, if anything, it’ll give us both a target. Something to aim for if … well, if it’s all as bad as it seems.”
Blane nodded. “I can’t promise anything.”
Paul shrugged. “Don’t want a promise. Just a commitment. Let me know you’re still with us, even if you are off on some fool errand.”
“Where, then?”
“I don’t know this part of the country? Holly?”
“Not me.”
“Gerald does,” Blane said. “We’ll arrange it with him when I go.”
“Which is when?”
“Now.”
23. The Ruin
Fay sat in a field a mile across the valley from the farm. It was still dark, but she could see clearly by moonlight.
Spread around her, like frozen ripples in a sickly pond, were concentric circles of dead and dying grass. At the edges of the field it clung on tenaciously to life, and the hedges were as lush and explosive as ever. But in the field, brown and diseased plants withered quickly into the soil. They spread their poison, giving the ground an acidity which shrivelled worms and suffocated the most hardy of bugs. Scattered around the field lay several dead foxes, their auburn pelts stiff and dull in the sliver light, legs pointing skyward in one final sprint. A badger snuffled among them. Fay glanced its way, saw that it had a horn growing from between its eyes, decided to let it be.
No need to destroy art.
She had been there for several hours. In that time she had not moved, since each action brought an opposite reaction of pain and discomfort. Her skin was sallow and rough, and hung from her bones like a drying hide draped across a frame. Her body, hidden within loose clothing, sprouted growths and lesions which wept and stank. Her new teeth had begun to fall out, leaving nothing but hollows full of pain in their place. Pressure pulsed behind her eyeballs, like madness seeking escape.
She knew what was happening, had been expecting it ever since the ruin kick-started the day before. But not this quickly, surely? Not so fast that she would have no time to tell Blane what he really was, show him the proof and cut the bitch with him down to size? She was determined to progress, to transcend the physical disablements which threatened to ground her, and to attain her true aims. It was all she had left.
She cursed the land, as she had for a decade. But now her curse held power. She spat, and a slug caught in her spittle shrivelled and turned black. When she exhaled, poison condensed in the air and drifted away to lay its fiery web across a tree, or a bird, or a nest of insects. She preferred it like this, when darkness hid much of the landscape from view. This way, there was only so much she had to see; like the badger, malformed and changing already.
It had not always been like this. Once, she had laughed with Blane and been accompanied in her song by the birds in the hedges and trees. Nature had caressed her with its gentle touch, in turn letting her provide a solid counterpoint for the flowing of life through the world. She had laid herself truly open to its influences, revelling in the trust which existed there and wallowing in the two-way relationship keeping her whole. Time had swept by them, touching them only lightly, turning them around and swirling about them in its ever-fluctuating journey. They had been together, then, inextricably bound by the love of what had made them, certain never to wane …
Until the bad days when it had all ended, when nature was no longer fair but vindictive.
Fay had a cause for celebration. Revenge was not a word she was used to – she was not a sadist – but now it sounded good, tasted right. Things had to be righteous and reasonable, and certain shadows of chance just could not be allowed to become reality.
Moves were being taken, even now.
Fay’s eyes, though hidden beneath eyelids drooping like melted wax, were bright and hungry. Full of a terrible intelligence, and a complete knowledge of what she wanted now that the ruin was in full swing.
She was patient. Time may not heal, but it would tell.
The farmhouse door opened. Two figures came out, guns pointing warily ahead of them. Blane followed, a shotgun resting across his arms, glancing around. Even from this distance, Fay could see that he was changed. His shoulders slumped, his head hung low. Perhaps he knew already, and he was leaving to do the decent thing?
If that were the case, he had to be stopped.
Fay stood and felt the thing in her stomach shift position, scraping away more of her stomach lining with cruel, sharp edges. She started across the field, passing through hedges and fences as if they barely existed. Within a few seconds she was hiding behind the hedge adjacent to the farm buildings, and she could see the three men at the door. The old farmer, the tall one, and Blane himself. She could see now that his shoulders were only slumped because of the rucksack he carried, and if anything his eyes burned with a purpose they had been lacking for many, many years. He seemed uncomfortable carrying the shotgun, and Fay would be most interested to see him faced with shooting something of nature. Paradoxes had always fascinated her, even before the ruin began. This would be one of the greatest.
The three men remained on the doorstep, not talking, trying to pierce the dark with their weak eyes. Fay felt like rattling a bush or darting across the yard, too quickly for them to focus on but slow enough to trail a fleeting shadow behind her. But she was tired, her bones ached. And besides, she did not relish the possibility, however remote, of being peppered with buckshot. She was in enough discomfort.
She waited for Blane to leave. The two men walked across the yard with him to where the farm lane began, then exchanged a few hurried words and watched him move away. They went back to the farmhouse, dragging an air of dejection with them. Fay giggled – it came out as a hiss, involuntary and unrestrained – and both men looked across at where she hid. One of them, the farmer, raised his shotgun to hip height. The tall man touched him on the shoulder and indicated the house with a nod of his head, and they reached the front door without further incident.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Fay set off after Blane. She kept her distance at first, gliding back over the fields until she was watching him from the heights of the surrounding hillsides. Then curiosity and a warped sense of affection overcame her. She slipped down the slope as dawn splashed redly across the eastern sky. Clouds caught the sunlight and bent it, filtered it, refined it before it struck the changing earth. Birds flitted across the brightening sky, not as many as usual, some of them hissing or sweeping in unfamiliar flight patterns. Insects emerged from hedgerows and grasses and trees, buzzing the air, finding many more dead things than usual to show an interest in today.
Soon, Fay had fallen into step half a mile behind Blane. She could smell him; there was fear there, and also a sense of determination.
He was looking for her.
She laughed. High in the branches of an elm tree, a crow tumbled dead from its perch.
The little dead girl is running. Her feet pound clouds of dust from the dry earth, kicking up the remains of crops and the twisted, desiccated bodies of dead birds. Feathers flutter down behind her, marking her path across the landscape. Sometimes, things squeal beneath her feet. They are either not quite dead or impossibly alive, but she does not look down to see.
Her arms ache, her legs beg to crumple her to the ground, but there is no breath. Try as she might, she cannot draw the stagnant air into her lonely lungs. She is dead, so it does not matter, but it still frustrates and terrifies her. Her hair is long and lustrous, and she flicks it back over her shoulder as she runs. Doesn’t hair keep growing after death? How long had she been dead? How long had her hair been when she died?
Ahead, bright in the blazing sunlight, there is a door. It stands in the field, stripped of paint by exposure to the weather and surrounded by a frame looking set to rot. Its base is set in the surface of the soil. There is nothing around it, no wall, no surround other than the frame. She pa
uses before it, knowing it is pure temptation but unable to resist anyway. She glances around at the other side and sees the same thing: a door; rusty handle; timber raw and dried from ages in the sun.
She glances around, conscious of the silence and hating it. In the distance, set against the light brown of the dead hillside, a white farmhouse points wrecked walls at the sky. Its roof timbers stand out against the background like the ribs of a dead giant, the windows gaping wounds in its sides, giving a view into nothing. Scattered around the farm are vague humps in the landscape, the bodies of cattle disintegrating back into the earth and poisoning it forever.
The dead girl reaches out for the handle. It is stiff with rust and time. She strains but it does not move. Perhaps, she thinks, it will not open for dead things. Why should it? Whatever is beyond is obviously worth protecting from the terrible blight which reigns here now, so why should it open for her, just another dead thing? Still she twists and works at the handle, scraping her hand against the rusted metal.
This side of the door the dead little girl must remain dead. On the other side, who knows what may happen? Could life return to static bones? Can flesh be reformed, flooded with fresh memory and made to breath and pulse and revel in life once more?
There is something behind her. It breaks the silence of the landscape, a noise approaching from miles away. A whisper at first, then a buzz, and then a roar of clanking metal like a continuously crashing train. A shadow disassociates itself from the darkness further along the valley. It is huge, a rolling monolith of metal, a million chains intermingled and twisted together like a child’s elastic band ball. Loose Medusa chains whip at the air as it rolls, snatching sunlight from the sky, swallowing it into darkness. They are sharp, filed to make a point, and rusty-red with the remains of victims.
She is dead already. But she knows that this monstrosity will kill her.
She heaves at the door, raising a foot and kicking at it, hauling at the handle in case she’s wrong, in case it opens into this terrible land instead of out of it. The rumble of the approaching thing is increasing, the ground begins to shake, and the dead girl realises that it is far, far bigger than she had thought at first.
Then she has an idea. The door is locked, so it must have a keyhole. She bends down and looks. The hole is a bright light in the body of the door.
Sunlight bathes a burgeoning hillside, encouraging buds to sprout and baby birds to take flight. Rabbits explores the long grasses at the edge of the woodland, and a huge stag deer peers between the trees with wide, intelligent eyes. A stream tumbles out from under an ancient folly on the hilltop, watering a hundred species of plants and flowers along its banks. A woman stands on the hillside, hands on her hips in a casual show of nonchalance. She is tall, naked, attractive. Nature does not pass around her; it flows through her.
Something plucks the girl from where she squats in front of the door and she realises that the monster is upon her. A slinging chain has grabbed her, burying its claws into her dead flesh, and is sucking her back and up. As the huge ball rolls over the free-standing door, driving it into the ground and crushing it beyond salvation, the dead girl is flung high into the sky.
She spins upwards, and there is a brief instant of weightlessness – and realisation – as she reaches the zenith of her flight. Then she drops, plunging down towards the ground which is no longer ground.
The ball has flattened and spread. A thousand tons of chains and hooks point skyward, ready to pierce and rip her. She cries out and the sound, a real sound, is so much louder than anything in this dead land.
Wake up, the voice says, but she is already waking. She stays for another second, watching. The chains are melting into the ground. Grass is growing through their links, choking them. In a way, she realises, the door has already opened.
Peer opened her eyes. The room was still in semi-darkness, but the pinkish light of a cloudy dawn smeared the window. The fire had burned down to a faint glow.
Mary sat in the chair facing her, a faintly bemused expression on her face.
“You left me to sleep,” Peer said.
Mary sat bolt upright. “Were you asleep? I didn’t notice.”
Peer shook her head. “I wasn’t asleep. But I could have been. I thought we were supposed to be looking out for each other.”
“So would you have seen me nod off with your eyes closed, huh?” Mary shouted.
“What’s up?” Paul said. He and Holly were sitting at the big kitchen table, chatting quietly. Gerald glanced around from where he was preparing a fried breakfast for them all, but looked back quickly to what he was doing.
“Nothing,” Mary called in a sing-song voice, smiling sweetly.
Peer shivered. It was not cold, but the memory of the dream drew a cool finger down her back. She’d been sleeping. After everything that had happened, she’d allowed herself to fall asleep.
Or perhaps not.
She remembered coming back to the fire after Blane had left, sitting down and gazing at the burning logs. She felt hollowed out by his leaving, as if life and hope had fled with him. Paul had smiled at her and tried to calm her, telling her that they’d be meeting up with Blane in thirty-six hours. But for Peer, he did not carry the same authority as Blane. He looked fitter, spoke as confidently, if not more so, but there was something about Blane which reached deep down inside Peer, and held her up.
She had never met anyone quite like him. So strange and distant, yet so familiar as well. She did not know him, yet there was a familiarity between them, not in the way they spoke or acted but somewhere deeper. It was as if he had the soul of the person she so wanted to be. That brave, intense, meaningful individual who had somehow eluded Peer all her adult life. She had tried, of course, but a succession of bland jobs and duller relationships had soured her to ever becoming the person she aspired to.
And she was sure Blane felt it as well.
Maybe that was why Mary seemed to dislike her; though in truth, the dog was the only thing she did seem to hold in any regard. Mary spent minutes at a time staring at Blane, her expression unreadable, balanced somewhere between mockery and longing. Silently asking, perhaps, for the same invisible, indivisible link which existed between him and Peer to also spring magically into existence between the two of them. Peer was sure that this could never happen, as certain as she was of the existence of her own link with him. But this conviction scared her more than comforted her; it made Mary not only unpleasant and objectionable, but dangerous as well. What lengths would a person like this go to in normal times?
What lengths now?
“It’s getting light,” Paul said. “We’ll be moving out soon, I reckon.”
“Right, okay, fine, yep,” said Mary condescendingly. “So who the fuck put you in charge?” She stood and Spike stood with her, melded to her leg. The animal seemed to sense the tension and stayed close to his mistress’s side.
Paul shook his head at her. “Nobody. I’m not in charge. No one is, it was just a suggestion. I thought we’d all agreed to let Blane go on his way, and meet up with him tomorrow night. If we’re going to do that, we really should set out and see if we can find anyone else hanging around, waiting for help. Or maybe we can find some help ourselves.”
Mary glared at him, and for a terrible moment it looked as if she was going to rush him. Her eyes blazed with inner turmoil, the muscles on her arms clenching, back twitching. The air was thick with anticipated conflict, still and silent and heavy. Peer gasped. Holly half stood behind Paul, but paused when the dog growled.
“Down, Spike,” Mary said, waving her hand, breaking eye contact with Paul and severing the tension. “Down, I said.”
The dog continued to growl. It was staring directly at Holly, and as she eased herself back into the kitchen chair, the creature’s eyes followed. Its front lowered towards the floor, its haunches flexed.
“Spike!” Mary hissed. The hound did not break concentration.
“Paul?” Holly was half hidden behin
d Paul, her fear for him as well as herself. Paul shifted the shotgun in his arms, slid his hand back up to the trigger guard. The dog took no notice. It paid attention to no one other than Holly, now sitting slouched down in the chair.
Mary knelt next to the dog and slapped it around the muzzle. Paul winced, but the dog merely turned its head stupidly and stared up at Mary. “Stop it!” she said. “There’s a good dog.” She stood, glanced smugly at the others and led the hound back to her seat by the fire.
Peer stared at her. She did not return her gaze.
“Damn dog’s dangerous,” Gerald said.
“What do you know, old man,” Mary hissed. “You’ve been spending your day shooting cows.”
“Yes, my bloody cows,” Gerald shouted. His eyes watered and he turned to the window facing out over the valley.
“Don’t know why we have to follow the fool, anyway,” Mary continued. “He wants to go get himself killed or eaten, fine. Don’t know what the hell he’s up to anyway, wandering off like that.”
“He thinks he knows something about what’s happening,” Holly said. “He’s going to try to find someone.”
Mary froze visibly in her chair. Her expression became that of someone shocked beyond words, but striving desperately to contain that emotion within. It was a poker face that gave away her whole hand.
Peer, sitting opposite, saw. And noted. And wondered just who Blane had gone to find.
24. Damaged Flesh
Blane felt reality distorting once more.
With the others, survival was the prime concern. Now, wandering along this farm lane with secret noises following his progress from behind hedges, more important matters besieged his confused mind. The emphasis had shifted. Countless millions may be dead, but he was on his way to meet someone more important than any of that.
