The Birds, They're Back

by Wendy Reakes

  Then, at three-forty, Bill heard a noise.

  The birds were back.

  Chapter 60

  Harry and Ellen blew out all the candles, and then Harry opened the curtains along the glass wall to the terrace. He said he'd prefer to watch them, rather than hide, so that their behavior could be monitored. He also wanted the birds to see the windows were impenetrable, that they were wasting their time being there, and that no blood would be spilled in that house.

  All the people gasped when they saw the masses upon the terrace. The birds looked stuffed, so intent and evil were their staring eyes. Then he realized they must have been looking at their own reflections, not the people inside the house. Harry felt a bizarre sense of power, knowing he could see them, but they couldn’t see him.

  Yet, they still amassed on the terrace. By instinct, they knew the people were inside but as one after the other flew off its perch and went headfirst into the window, they soon realized they weren’t going to get in. Some of the kids cheered as they watched their heads hit the glass, causing them to bleed as their beaks broke. Red streaks ran down the window, a triumph for the humans on the other side.

  “Small brains,” said Ellen, ironically.

  Harry turned to look at her. In that dim light, amid the danger that lurked outside, he realized he still loved her. He really did love her. “What do you mean?”

  “The professor said they had small brains, that they couldn’t do what they’re now doing.”

  Martin turned to look at her too. He had tears in his eyes as if everything he'd ever believed in had been a waste of time.

  “But why are you saying that now?” Harry asked Ellen.

  She pointed to the side of the terrace. “Because…look.”

  A telegraph pole, shooting up from the side of the gorge on the other side of the balustrade was overladen with birds.

  The people watched, as more and more came, piling on, tripping over each other in their quest to anchor themselves to the pole.

  Harry looked at the top. It went meters above their heads.

  Then he knew.

  If the birds weighed it down, the pole could crash through the roof tiles above the unbreakable windows. He gasped at the realization that it may only take them a short time to force it down to the sitting room where sixteen people would be overcome with murderous birds.

  Not sixteen people.

  One was missing.

  Ellen watched Mark Shark go through the kitchen swing door. She chased after him, demanding to know what he was intending. He was dressed in Harry’s old skiing jacket and a mask covered his eyes, but it was the chainsaw in his hands that frightened her.

  She stopped him from going through the sliding door to the terrace. “What are you doing, Mark?”

  He stopped and lifted the mask from his face. He held a look of fear in his eyes, but there was bravery there too. “Got to look after you, haven’t I?” he said. “It’s my job.”

  “You don’t have to go out there.”

  “I do, Ellen,”

  She knew he was walking to his death. She just knew.

  She stood on tiptoes and hugged him. They kissed, as they'd kissed once before, in the same place in the kitchen. "Please?" she begged one more time.

  He kissed her again on the forehead and then he slid the doors open. He blocked the gap with his body as he shut it again after him. He took one more glance at Ellen and then he went for the birds.

  From the sitting room, Bill and everyone else watched as Ellen’s friend, Mark, walked past the windows with a chainsaw in his hands and a mask covering his eyes. Already, birds had covered him from the rear, but still, he remained strong as he fired it up. They heard the whirring of the saw as he leaned his padded body over the balustrade. He sawed into the telegraph pole, despite the birds covering his back. They were pecking at any available flesh, puncturing his ears, making blood run down his neck. The visor over his eyes became covered in red as he became entombed in fluttering black feathers.

  But still, he kept sawing.

  Inside, Ellen wept as her hands banged against the glass calling his name. Her children had their arms around her, wanting to diminish the pain she was feeling.

  The birds were fretting as the chainsaw went through the wooden pole and as the cables between the pole and the next one down the valley began to sag, Mark was overcome with the weight of the birds on his back. His knees buckled, and he went down, hanging onto the rail around the terrace. Then, with one final surge of strength, he lifted his body up and pushed towards the pole, making the wood crack before it toppled slowly down the gorge.

  The birds flew away, except for the ones covering Mark’s body.

  Ellen’s heart stopped when she saw Matt outside, carrying a sweeping brush.

  “Matt!!!” Harry called.

  Matt was crashing the broom down upon the birds that covered Mark’s body, making them fly away, just as Harry grabbed his son and pulled him back inside.

  They slammed the doors shut until they were sure all the birds had gone and then they went out and brought back the body of Mark Shark.

  Chapter 61

  “They’re going to come back,” said corporal Baines. He was smoking a cigarette. Ellen wanted to yell at him to put it out, but she couldn’t bear any more tension. Why had he presumed that he could smoke in her house?

  Mark had been placed next to the other two bodies in the laundry room. Ellen cried when she saw his face and when they pulled off the mask, she gasped with relief when she saw his eyes were still there. But the monsters had taken his bottom lip, an ear…and the tips of two fingers were missing from his hands. The sight of his injuries disgusted Ellen to the point of extreme rage. She wanted to lash out, to kill those creatures one by one, and make them die a slow, painful death.

  Harry held onto her, not knowing why her grief was so intense. But he must surely have suspected she’d grown close to Mark. He must surely have seen that.

  In the sitting room, Ellen yelled at Matt for taking such a risk going out there among the birds. He stormed off and slammed the door to his room.

  Everyone was upset.

  Dolly and Gladys were sobbing, and Melanie had gone back into her shell, as her complex mind closed out the horror of the day.

  Bill had taken off his cap and he was stroking his head as if he wanted to erase the thoughts flying through his mind.

  Martin was sitting with his hands over his face, blocking out the vision of misery in the room, as the three girls hugged each other and cried.

  And in the middle of the floor, the four younger children sat in a circle with the cat in its center. They laughed as they tickled its stomach as it rolled over and played.

  Harry told everyone to quieten down when he heard something. It was a knocking sound, random, not like a branch in the wind regularly tapping a window. It was erratic.

  The noise was coming from just above.

  Then he remembered. Above the kitchen was a small loft, housing the extractor fan.

  “They’re inside the house,” Harry said, ominously.

  And everyone went silent.

  Bill was absolutely one hundred per cent sure that it was time to leave. He went through the front door to where the truck waited on the drive. The area was clear, but above, in the sky, that was becoming lighter as the morning came, a cloud of black and white birds hovered, waiting to disperse over any escaping man, woman or child.

  Everyone was quickly ushered out of the house, to climb into the back of the truck. Bill and Corporal Baines fixed down the canvas, while Harry, with one arm in a cast, swung his body up into the passenger seat in the front.

  Bill followed, lifting himself inside to take the wheel.

  Baines was still outside the truck when he saw Ellen coming out of the garage at the side of the house. She’d been searching for an industrial sized metal teapot. She’d had it for years, left from a tea party they’d held when they first moved into the house. Ellen thought it would
be perfect to keep the group supplied with tea. Besides, she’d promised it to Dolly, after Dolly and Gladys had related the tale of the dead finch in the teapot back home.

  Baines went to her and took the pot from her arms. He went to the cab and passed it through the window to Bill.

  Bill frowned at the object sitting on his lap.

  He passed it to Harry.

  With one hand resting upon the dusty article, Harry looked to the sky at the approaching birds about to rain down on them like hell’s own angels. Then he looked at the pot. The difference between the two was striking. An everyday mundane object and a charge of death coming from the sky. He placed the teapot at his feet in the footwell. “You should drive,” Harry said resolute, with only mild evidence of tension in his words. “We’re out of time.”

  Baines shouted up to Bill. “I’ll get in the back with the others.”

  In his wing mirror, Bill watched him run along the side of the truck. “Drive,” Baines shouted as banged his hand on the back.

  When he disappeared from view, Bill counted to three, allowing the soldier time to get inside. Then, without further hesitation, he shoved his foot on the accelerator and careered off along the drive.

  The only person who’d noticed Ellen wasn’t inside the truck, was Baines. He’d seen her through the open door of the house, just before he was about to jump in the back.

  As the bird cloud began to disperse from the sky, coming in to lay claim to the people below, Baines ran into the house as Bill drove the truck away, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

  Inside the house, Ellen was yelling. “Molly?”

  Baines rushed inside as Molly appeared from the kitchen with her birdcage. The lovebirds were back.

  "I found them outside the kitchen," Molly said as she realized the sitting room was no longer full of people.

  Ellen turned back, and through the open door she watched the truck leaving the drive, turning right at the end to disappear from sight. Realization hit her. They had been left behind. Her family had gone. “What’s your name?” she asked corporal Baines.

  “Baines.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Can we climb down the gorge?”

  “I know a way, but it will be risky.” She looked beyond the windows to the appearing light of the dawn. “We always get an early morning mist, which should hide us from the birds, and we’ll still be able to see half a metre from our faces in order to navigate. We just have to keep to the sides.” She was thinking aloud. It was dangerous, but it was doable. What choice did they have?

  Baines once again grabbed the cage from Molly’s arms. Ellen was about to protest, until she realized it would hinder them. She was surprised when he took the lovebirds from the cage and put them inside his jacket pocket. Then he lifted Molly and placed her on his torso like a baby. "Wrap your legs around me and hang on tight," he said.

  Startled, Ellen said "Won't it be easier to climb if she’s on your back?"

  “So that the birds can get her first, you mean?”

  Ellen now had a picture in her head that was going to make climbing down the gorge very difficult. If the birds came for them, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Baines was waiting for Ellen to move. “Let’s go.”

  She slid open the terrace doors to the early morning mist drifting up from the gorge. They dashed to the side and Ellen climbed over the balustrade. She fixed her feet firmly on the rocks while on the other side, Baines, holding her daughter in his arms, followed.

  “Hold on, baby,” Ellen said as they followed her on the climb down the gorge.

  Everything was against them, but the mist was their friend. Out of sight, they heard the birds, hundreds of thousands of them, squawking and screeching their morning tune, like a ritual of death.

  Ellen and Baines put each careful foot forward, moving downward, clinging to the rocks, while the murderous flock hovered above, and where, at any moment, they could fly from their perches and knock the three people off the cliff to their deaths.

  Harry directed Bill to the station beneath the gorge. They were grateful to see the roads clear as they went downwards at a racing speed. He wondered where the cloud of birds had gone and why they weren’t coming after them. A mist had formed across the gorge, as they travelled down the steep incline. If it cleared, would the birds see them and attack? Had they so far been lucky as the mist became their friend?

  He looked at Bill’s staring eyes, fixed on the road ahead. “Are you okay?”

  Bill nodded curtly, staring straight in front, with his cap resting on the back of his head and his fingers clutching the wheel, making his knuckles turn white.

  They reached the bottom without an attack.

  It was unexpected.

  Harry saw the entrance to the disused station. The metal gate preventing entry was padlocked and chained, but Harry already knew it would be. He told Bill to reverse the back of the truck so that it could be unloaded quickly. When Bill turned off the engine, Harry said “Use the bolt cutters.”

  Bill worked swiftly as Harry with just one hand free, untied the back canvas. Inside, everyone looked relieved to see they had arrived, but as he searched the group, Harry couldn’t see Ellen. And where was Moll? He looked at Matt. He could hardly speak. “Where’s your mum?”

  Matt looked bewildered. “I thought she was with you, up front.”

  “Where’s Moll?”

  Matt jumped out and helped the women down from the truck. He called over his shoulder, “Dad, where are they?”

  Harry didn’t know. Oh god. He didn’t know.

  As Bill broke the locks on the gate, it creaked open and everyone went inside, shining torches on the black interior of the station.

  Harry grabbed Bill’s arm. “I have to go back?”

  Then he heard his name. “Harrrrry.”

  Alongside the soldier, Ellen and Molly came up over the wall that ran next to the river. They raced across the road towards the truck. With his free arm, Harry hugged them and guided them in the direction of the entrance to the station.

  He went to shake Baines’ hand, but Baines just saluted.

  Harry closed his eyes, just for a second. His wife and child were safe. And it was all thanks to the bozo.

  Before they went underground, Harry and Bill looked upwards to Brunel's Suspension Bridge, 300ft up, traversing the Clifton Gorge.

  As the morning sun burned the mist from the valley, the newfound friends saw the bridge covered at every angle, every hanging cable, every tower and part, with birds of all variety.

  Their beaks were held high, screaming and croaking and screeching in the silence of the deserted city, singing a chorus of triumph as they made their presence known, laying claim to the skies…And to the earth.

  Epilogue

  By midday Monday,

  the gas to kill the birds never came.

  The people underground waited,

  keeping themselves hidden for days on end,

  but the gas never came.

  Radio Burlington made several broadcasts,

  until they too admitted defeat, since the gas never came.

  And the birds lived on because the gas never came.

  And over the seas to America, the birds flew to

  San Francisco,

  to begin their murderous revolt against the humans

  in a little town

  called Bodega Bay.

  A note from the author

  Thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading ‘The Birds…they’re back,’ as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Please help authors by leaving a review on Amazon. Most self-published authors make little financial returns, especially when they have to give away their books to gain readership. And even if you haven’t purchased the book, because your next-door neighbour lent it to you, you can still leave a review.

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  Check out my Facebook page:

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  If you enjoyed The Birds…they’re back. Look out for my other books on Amazon. I particularly recommend:

  ‘LOST. Under Ground’ and ‘The Song of the Underground.’

  Until the next time,

  Wendy