by Tim Lebbon
“Dad!” This time it was a shout. His dad spun around, and it almost broke Jack’s heart to see the relief on his face. But then fear regained its hold and his dad began to shout.
“Jack, stay away, they’re here, look! Stay away, Jack!”
“But Dad—”
His father fired the shotgun and one of the dead people hit the road. It—Jack could not even discern its sex—squirmed and slithered, unable to regain its feet.
Mandy, he thought, where’s Mandy, what of Mandy?
Mandy dead, Mandy gone, only me and Dad left—
But the naming of his fears did him no good, because he was right to be afraid. He knew that when he heard the sounds behind him. He knew it when he turned and saw Mandy scrabbling out from the ditch, her long black hair clotted with dried leaves, her grace hobbled by death.
“Mandy,” he whispered, and he thought she paused.
There was another gunshot behind him and the sound of metal hitting something soft. Then running feet coming his way. He hoped they were his father’s. He remembered the dead people in the field yesterday, how fast they had moved, how quickly they had charged.
Mandy was grey and pale and thin. Her eyes showed none of his sister, her expression was not there, he could not sense her at all. Her silver rings rattled loose on long stick fingers. She was walking towards him.
“Mandy, Mandy, it’s me, Jack—”
“Jack! Move!” His father’s words were slurred because he was running, it was his footsteps Jack could hear. And then he heard a shout, a curse.
He risked a glance over his shoulder. His father had tripped and slid across the lane on his hands and knees, the shotgun clattering into the ditch, three of the dead folk closing on him from behind. “Dad, behind you!” Jack shouted.
His father looked up at Jack, his eyes widened, his mouth hung open, his hands bled. “Behind you!” he shouted back.
A weight struck Jack and he went sprawling. He half turned as he fell so that he landed on his side, and he looked up and back in time to see Mandy toppling over on top of him. The wind was knocked from him and for a few seconds his chest felt tight, useless, dead.
Perhaps this is what it’s like, he thought. To be like them.
At last he drew a shuddering breath, and the stench of Mandy hit him at the same time. The worst thing…the worst thing of all…was that he could detect a subtle hint of Obsession beneath the dead animal smell of her. His mum and dad always bought Obsession for Mandy at the airport when they went on holiday, and Jack had had a big box of jelly-fruits.
He felt her hands clawing at him, fingers seeking his throat, bony knees jarring into his stomach, his crotch. He screamed and struggled but could not move, Mandy had always beaten him at wrestling, she was just so strong—
“Get off!” his dad shouted. Jack could not see what was happening—he had landed so that he looked along the lane away from Tewton—but he could hear. “Get the fuck off, get away!” A thump as something soft hit the ground, then other sounds less easily identifiable, like an apple being stepped on or a leg torn from a cooked chicken. Then the unmistakable metallic snap of the shotgun being broken, reloaded, closed.
Two shots in rapid succession.
“Oh God, oh God, oh…Jack, it’s not Mandy Jack, you know that don’t you!”
Jack struggled onto his back and looked up at the thing atop him.
You can name your fears, Mandy had said, and Jack could not bear to look, this bastard thing resembling his beautiful sister was a travesty, a crime against everything natural and everything right.
Jack closed his eyes. “I still love you Mandy,” he said, but he was not talking to the thing on top of him now.
There was another blast from the shotgun. A weight landed on his chest, something sprinkled down across his face. He kept his eyes closed. The weight twisted for a while, squirmed and scratched at Jack with nails and something else, exposed bones perhaps—
A hand closed around his upper arm and pulled.
Jack screamed, shouted until his throat hurt. Maybe he could scare it off.
“It’s alright, Jackie,” a voice whispered into his ear. Mandy had never called him Jackie, so why now, why when—
Then he realised it was his father’s voice. Jack opened his eyes as he stood and looked straight into his dad’s face. They stared at each other because they both knew to stare elsewhere—to stare down—would invite images they could never, ever live with.
They held hands as they ran along the lane, away from Tewton. For a while there were sounds of possible pursuit behind them, but they came from a distance and Jack simply could not bring himself to look.
They ran for a very long time. For a while Jack felt like he was going mad, or perhaps it was clarity in a world gone mad itself. In his mind’s eye he saw the dead people of Tewton waiting in their little town, waiting for the survivors to flee there from the countryside, slaughtering and eating them, taking feeble strength from cooling blood and giving themselves a few more hours before true death took them at last. The image gave him a strange sense of hope because he saw it could not go on forever. Hope in the death of the dead. A strange place to take comfort.
At last they could run no more. They found a petrol station and collapsed in the little shop, drinking warm cola because the electricity was off, eating chocolate and crisps. They rested until mid-afternoon. Then, because they did not know what else to do, they moved on once more.
Jack held his father’s hand. They walked along a main road, but there was no traffic. At one junction they saw a person nailed high up on an old telegraph pole. Jack began to wonder why but then gave in, because he knew he would never know.
The countryside began to flatten out. A few miles from where they were was the coast, an aim as good as any now, a place where help may have landed.
“You okay to keep going, son?”
Jack nodded. He squeezed his dad’s hand as well. But he could not bring himself to speak. He had said nothing since they’d left the petrol station. He could not. He was too busy trying to remember what Mandy looked like, imprint her features on his mind so that he would never, ever forget.
There were shapes wandering the fields of dead crops. Jack and his dad increased their pace but the dead people were hardly moving, and they seemed to pose no threat. He kept glancing back as they fell behind. It looked like they were harvesting what they had sown.
As the sun hit the hillsides behind them they saw something startling in the distance. It looked like a flash of green, small but so out of place amongst this blandness that it stood out like an emerald in ash. They could not run because they were exhausted, but they increased their pace until they drew level with the field.
In the centre of the field stood a scarecrow, very lifelike, straw hands hidden by gloves and face painted with a soppy sideways grin. Spread out around its stand was an uneven circle of green shoots. The green was surrounded by the rest of the dead crop, but it was alive, it had survived.
“Something in the soil, maybe?” Jack said.
“Farming chemicals?”
Jack shrugged. “Maybe we could go and see.”
“Look,” his dad said, pointing out towards the scarecrow.
Jack frowned, saw what his dad had seen, then saw the trail leading to it. It headed from the road, a path of crushed shoots aiming directly out towards the scarecrow. It did not quite reach it, however, and at the end of the trail something was slumped down in the mud, just at the boundary of living and dead crop. Jack thought he saw hair shifting in the breeze, the hem of a jacket lifting, dropping, lifting again, as if waving.
They decided not to investigate.
They passed several more bodies over the next couple of hours, all of them still, all of them lying in grotesque contortions in the road or the ditches. Their hands were clawed, as if they’d been trying to grasp a hold of something before coming to rest.
Father and son still held hands, and as the sun began to bleed
across the hillsides they squeezed every now and then to reassure each other that they were alright. As alright as they could be, anyhow.
Jack closed his eyes every now and then to remember what Mandy and his mum had looked like. Each time he opened them again, a tear or two escaped.
He thought he knew what they would find when they reached the coast. He squeezed his father’s hand once more, but he did not tell him. Best to wait until they arrived.
For now, it would remain his secret.
The End
Tim Lebbon
photo by Tracey Lebbon
Tim Lebbon's books include Face, The Nature of Balance, White and Other Tales of Ruin, As the Sun Goes Down and Until She Sleeps. He has won two British Fantasy Awards for Best Short Fiction (one for Naming of Parts), and one Bram Stoker Award. His future books include the dark fantasy duology The Dead of Night: Dusk and Dawn, Exorcising Angels (a novella with Simon Clark), and Fears Unnamed, a novella collection due in limited hardback and mass market paperback. His novel Face has just been optioned by BBC Wales.
Visit Tim's website at http://www.timlebbon.net.
Return to Copyright Information
Scorpius Digital Publishing Titles
After the Vikings, by G. David Nordley - Interwoven Stories of a Future Mars
The Algis Budrys Omnibus, Volume One - Some Will Not Die and selected short fiction
Ariel, by Steven R. Boyett - A magical adventure through a world where fantasy and reality have collided
Beyond the Valley of the Cyberpunks, by Bruce Bethke - Short fiction by the Campbell and Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of Headcrash and Cyberpunk
Dark Corners, by Barry B. Longyear - A master of science fiction takes you to the darkest places in the human soul
Dreamlode, by John Meaney - Short fiction from the BSFA Award-nominated author of To Hold Infinity, Paradox, and Context
Fine Cuts, by Dennis Etchison - View the bright lights of Hollywood through the dark lens of Dennis Etchison's imagination
Flesh Wounds, by Brian A. Hopkins - 30 subtle and disturbing stories by the Stoker Award winner
Ghostland -Three haunting novellas by the Nebula Award-winning master of the modern ghost story
The Goddess Letters - A timeless myth made new again by the Western States Book Award winner
Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams
- The science fiction cult classic reissued with sequel novella “Solip:System”
The Hedge, the Ribbon, by Carol Orlock - A storyteller, a hedge, and a ribbon weave a magical spell into the everyday reality of a small town. Winner of the Western States Book Award, by the author of The Goddess Letters
Hemogoblins, Stories to Chill the Blood, by Alan M. Clark and Friends - Stories to astound, startle, and amuse, illustrated with paintings by award-winning illustrator Alan M. Clark
Hong on the Range, by William F. Wu - Louie Hong's adventures through a New West of cyber-enhanced cowboys and mechanized singing steers, by the author of A Temple of Forgotten Spirits
Hours of Darkness - 21 of the 21st century's best horror writers spin tales about what happens in the dark
Immortal Khan, by H. Doug Matsuoka - A tale of taoist masters, love, and laundromats, told in screenplay form
Living Midnight, by H. Doug Matsuoka - A dark future tale of mystery, music, and murder from the IEB Award finalist, author of Immortal Khan
Mars Dust and Magic Shows, by Mark Bourne - Unforgettable Stories from “science fiction’s best-kept secret”
Mobius Highway, by Howard V. Hendrix - Science fiction stories from the brilliant and daring author of Empty Cities of the Full Moon
Naming of Parts, by Tim Lebbon - Winner of the British Fantasy Award
Nearly People, by Conrad Williams - The British Fantasy Award and International Horror Guild Award-nominated novella
Orphans, by Steven R. Boyett - The best short fiction from the author of Ariel
Pieces of the Sky, by Marina Fitch - Tales of love, loss, laughter, and yes, lust, from a rising star of sf and fantasy
Rags and Old Iron, by Lorelei Shannon - A novel of childhood betrayed, love lost, and secrets rediscovered, by the author of Vermifuge
Something Rich and Strange, by Carrie Richerson - Extraordinary Tales of Fantasy from the Campbell Award finalist
The Sorcery Within, Book 1 of War of the Dragons, by Dave Smeds - A novel of magic, new worlds, and high adventure by the Nebula Award finalist
Street, by Jack Cady - A novel about horror and heroes, by the Nebula Award winner
Tales for the Long Rains, by Kij Johnson - Beautiful and enchanting short fiction by the author of The Fox Woman
Talking to Shadows, by Phoebe Reeves - A Story About Murder, Art, and Transformation, from the Stoker Award Nominee
A Temple of Forgotten Spirits, by William F. Wu - Jack Hong's adventures in the world of spirits and the world of men, following the kei-lin, by the author of Hong on the Range
Triad, by Sheila Finch - A Novel of Alien Contact by the Nebula Award winner
Vermifuge, and Other Toxic Cocktails, by Lorelei Shannon - Stories to make you shudder, weep, and laugh out loud, by one of today's best new talents, and the author of Rags and Old Iron
Wildest Dreams, by Norman Partridge - A novel of death, deliverance, and the Devil in California by the Stoker Award winner
A Writer's Life, by Eric Brown, winner of the BSFA Award - A tale of literary obsession and haunting discoveries
For more quality eBooks, visit New Albion Press, A Special Selection of Books for Discerning Readers
Crow Street Press, eBooks for Book Lovers
