Duet

by O'Gorman, Brian

  “I’m not leaving you,” she between gasping breaths.

  “Go, now, go on get out of here, I’m done for, you could get away…”

  “I’m not fucking leaving you, now shut the fuck up and keep moving,” she growled from beneath his arm.

  He should have known by now, she was far too stubborn to listen to him. He forced himself to try and move faster, but the pain from his knee was causing the world to swim again. He was going to faint soon and there was nothing he could do about it. This was how it was all going to end for both of them. But there was a sound, another sound mixed in with the sound of the water dribbling out of the door and crawling towards them, a deeper sound, more of a growl. A growl like…

  An engine.

  He brought up his free hand and slapped himself across the face. The world came back into focus again long enough for him to see Louis pulling up at the end of the path. She saw them making their way slowly down the path and then she saw the water coming down the path after them. She almost leapt from the car and ran over to them.

  “He’s hurt, it’s his knee…” began Nicola but Louis was already under the other arm. She was taller and stronger than Nicola and they doubled their speed straight away. Louis was shouting Tina’s name and telling her to get the back door of the car open. The door was open by the time they made it to the car and Louis crawled in the back, dragging Greg along with her. His long frame made it exhausting work getting him in and his injured knee was swelling up fast and it would no longer bend. Louis got out the other side and banged the door shut. Nicola had made it into the back with Greg and was squatting in the foot well. She couldn’t get the door shut because of Greg’s outstretched leg and she could see the water. It had made it to the end of the path and it turned a sharp right and began to come straight at them. Louis was almost at the other side of the car with the intention of forcing Greg’s leg inside but she saw the water coming and doubled back. She threw herself into the driver’s seat and hit the accelerator as hard as she could. Just as the car roared forwards Nicola could have sworn on a stack of bibles that she had seen the water leap off the ground as if it were a cat pouncing on its prey. She was certain that had they set off a second later then it would have been inside the car with them and then God knows what would have happened. Greg roared in pain again distracting her from what was going on in the rear view. The car door had swung over and crashed against his outstretched foot causing him even more pain.

  “You have to sit up, I can’t get your foot in the car,” she yelled at him.

  She looked at his face and saw that he was fighting just to stay conscious. She reached over and did something that she had never done the whole time they had been together, she slapped him across his face as hard as she could. His eyes rolled over again and then they came back into focus.

  “You have to pull yourself up a little so I can get your foot in the car properly,” she yelled.

  Greg gritted his teeth and pulled himself up to a sitting position using the tops of the seats.

  “Good, now pull yourself backwards. You only need to go back a little,” she said.

  Greg gritted his teeth again and braced himself against the tops of the seats he managed to lift his arse off the seat and pull himself back. It wasn’t much but it was enough. His foot cleared the doorway and she was able to pull the door just enough for it to catch. It wasn’t shut properly so it rattled as the car bounced along the road.

  “Where are we going?” she said to Louis.

  “First stop, the hospital. Your man there needs that knee looking at.”

  “No,” said Greg, “June, we have to find June, she is the only one who can…”

  “Greg we need to get that knee taken care of, June is probably dead by now.”

  “She is the only one who knows what is in the water, she might be the only one who can stop it. If I can strap my knee up and stop it moving I will be fine. We have to find her.”

  “Oh, so you’re are doctor now are you? That leg needs taking care of Greg.”

  “Louis, please you have to trust me. I don’t think there is much time,” he said and his eyes began to roll over again. A moment later he fainted.

  “Shit,” said Louis. “Right, we will go and have a quick look up at the home, but if she is not there then we are going straight to the hospital. Is everyone agreed?”

  “Yes, shouted Nicola from, her crouching position on the floor. Tina nodded in the passenger seat. Louis put the sirens on and began to drive faster towards the centre of the village.

  5.

  June wasn’t dead. But she was trapped in her own little version of hell. It was as if she had found a safe little corner of her own mind to hide out in when the water had invaded her consciousness. She was still aware that she was alive and she was still aware that she was still inhabiting her body, but it was almost like she had been hijacked. Her movements and actions were being controlled by the invader. She had tried to fight against it but it was far stronger than she could have ever imagined. Every time she tried to wrestle control of her body away from it, it would push her back down. She could almost see a pair of huge, nasty gnashing teeth snapping at her and making her retreat. She didn’t know how she was going to get out of this one, not at all. The worst part about it was that she knew exactly what it was trying to do and how it was going to do it. It was invading the entire water supply in the village. It was making its way through the sewers and creeping up toilet bowls and drain holes. It had already taken Soames whilst he was sat on the can and it had taken everyone else that had gone into that room. It had taken everyone at the nursing home after it has manged to get into the toilet cistern and though to the whole water supply. All the people that had bored her shitless the entire time that she was there had drunk the beast in their tea. Even their dissipating souls had nothing to say about being torn from their hosts in such a horrible way. Normally she would feel them being ripped from their bodies, just like she had done with Soames. She tried to focus on what was making it so angry, so disenchanted, so focused on getting its own way. She could see its mind’s eye showing her a stairway and the shadowy shape of a man trying to hobble out of his front door. He was being held up by a girl. A young and very pretty girl. He was hurt, and hurt bad. She could feel the pain rushing up from his leg and causing him to feel weak and faint, something he hadn’t been used to feeling throughout his life. He was supposed to be the protector, he was supposed to be protecting the girl….Nicola….her name was Nicola. He was scared, he knew the water was dangerous, he didn’t want to see Nicola die. He was going to put himself in front of the water so she could get away whilst it consumed him. He knew it was dangerous because someone had told him. June Dobson had told him. It was Greg, the nice young police officer that had come to see her in the home. She tried to focus herself in on him, she was trying to tell him to come and find her and to help save her from the thing that had taken her over. She was looking where the thing was taking her. It was heading down the hill towards the centre of the village. The water was draining from the reservoir, distributing itself all around the village. It was beginning to feed on the residents, but none of it was enough. No matter how many living things it consumed it couldn’t keep the hunger at bay. Just a few seconds after it had fed the hunger came right back, gnawing at it, driving it insane, making it want to tear the whole world apart and make every living thing on the face of it feel its pain. June could feel all of it, it made her want to scream and tear her own hair right out of her scalp. She had to remain focused, she had to reach out and try and get help. She had to use the gift that God had given her to try and stop this horrible beast from taking everyone. She had to reach out….

  There was someone still nearby. Someone whose mind was such an open place, a mind that she had touched before. She could almost see it and she already knew her way around. It was like visiting the home of an old friend, you already knew where everything was. She was in there and she left a message. She told them
to find the police officers. They had the power to spread the word. She left the message and then she told them to hurry, she was sharing space with the enemy and that enemy knew what she was doing.

  You got to move it, there isn’t much time.

  6.

  The water invaded the sewer systems first. It caught Soames with his pants down and then feasted on the other officers and the forensic team that came to fuss over the body. It ran up the toilets of every single residency in Hurndell and into the cisterns. It took just under twelve minutes to infect the cold water supply of the entire village. It didn’t even have to attack, it just waited to be poured into cups and drank, or poured out onto hands that needed washing, or filled up into bowls of dirty plates and it was there for the taking.

  Cory Walton lifted her young daughter Abby and placed her gently in the bath only to have her scream in a way that she had never heard before. For a brief moment she thought that she had run the bath too hot and her daughter was being scalded. She grabbed Abby under the arms and yanked her out of the bath but by the time she had lifted her clear of the water there was nothing left of her daughter but bones and pieces of internal organs. The child’s remains crumpled into pieces in her hands, dropping back into the water with a patter of small splashes. Cory shook her head, unable to comprehend what had just happened. She finally sucked in a large breath with which she was going to scream the fucking street down but the water was on her hands. It took Cory down in less than three seconds. The lungs that she had filled with air slumped in her suddenly exposed ribcage and deflated with a faint whistling sound. The Walton girls were no more.

  Pam Davidson had been pretty pissed off that evening. Having spent most of the day serving in the shop and making endless cups of tea, she was having to make cups of tea right now. Her husband Bob had decided that his back was playing up and that he needed to rest it up to make sure he was going to be in the shop with her tomorrow. She knew quite well that the old bastard was just angling for a day off. He had the same routine every single time and he never seemed to deviate from it. She wondered if he actually thought that she didn’t know what he was up to, or that he knew and just didn’t give a shit. Either way it made her as mad as a box of wasps. He was now lying on the floor, groaning occasionally and asking her if she would make a tea for him. She had gone into the kitchen with a smile on her face but secretly blowing smoke out of her ears she was so annoyed. But she went along with it, and she did so because she knew that by Friday night, when it was time for Bob to have his weekly drinks with all the other shit heads down at the Meadow pub, his back would be cured as if by magic. But Pam had been through this so many times that she knew that he would feel a slight twinge of guilt about it which she would exploit to allow herself to go on a girls’ night out into town. Normally they would go and get plastered and make utter fools of themselves, which was what Pam needed every so often. One time they had ended up in a club watching male strippers, something that Pam had never seen before. She also hadn’t known that they took everything off and left nothing to the imagination. At one point a huge muscular black man, with the biggest penis she had ever seen in her life came and danced right next to her. The other girls had all cheered her on, telling her to cop a feel. She had refused at first, but then something inside her came to life, something she had been keeping under wraps for the majority of her life. Whatever it was it caused her to grab the bouncing pecker with two hands and begin wanking him off. The other girls collapsed with laughter. She hadn’t forgotten that night in a hurry and neither had her friends. In their eyes she had just become a legend. So hear she was making tea for the lazy shit again and making plans for another big night out. Perhaps they might return to that club again and she could finish off her well hung friend this time. She was buzzing just thinking about it.

  She brought Bob his cup of tea and he moaned and groaned as he pushed himself up into a comfortable position. The urge to tip the scalding hot tea over him and smash the cup over his head was pretty strong, but she managed to resist. She turned the cup handle out towards him and allowed him to take hold of it. She smiled sarcastically at him and turned away to go and get the biscuits out. She heard Bob take a noisy slurp from his cup and then a moment later the cup smashed against the edge of the fireplace.

  “You clumsy old fucker,” she said turning back around. This time she was going to smack him one. She took a step forwards to give him his medicine and she stopped in her tracks. Her heart jolted in her chest and she could feel a scream rising in her throat. Bob was slumping back down onto the floor, but there was no skin left on his bones. She didn’t know if it was her mind playing tricks on her but she could swear that she could see bit of skin and flesh dripping from the exposed skeleton. The tea that had been spilled on the fireside began to fizz and bubble like a glass of freshly poured champagne and then it looked like it was collecting itself together, pooling on the fireside all by itself. Then it ran off the edge and ran across the carpet. For a moment it was able to float on top of the fibres but then it sank into the material. It turned into a dark wet patch on the carpet but it still continued to roll forwards. Pam turned from the horrific scene and ran, screaming at the top of her voice, into the downstairs toilet. She tried to get her breath back and to make sense of what she had just witnessed in the living room of her own house. For a fleeting moment, the answer came to her. She remembered Cory and Abby and the dead ducks and she knew it was the same thing that had killed the ducks was now making a beeline for her. She felt her evening meal, a baked potato with tuna, suddenly rising up in her chest and she flung the toilet lid up ready to send forth her half-digested meal. She closed her eyes as she leaned forwards and felt her stomach clench. She never saw the water in the bowl rising right up to the top. As she vomited, she dipped her face into the possessed water.

  Pam Davidson knew no more.

  The water took three quarters of the residents in Hurndell very quickly. Some survived by thinking quickly and getting out of their houses as soon as they could. Other just ran away out of blind panic from watching their loved ones being eaten away. The water knew it had to round them up. It knew it had to stop them from getting away. It wanted to consume every last one of them. It began to do things that it hadn’t been able to do before it had possessed the mind of June Dobson. Within half an hour, it had gained to capacity to think. Ten minutes later it became self-aware and it began to revise its plans. It wasn’t going to satisfy its hunger just by consuming, it was going to have to think bigger.

  7.

  Francis Bowers had hit traffic whilst she was heading back home. There was no way she was going to get back before the sun had gone down and that was going to be a total pain in the arse. She wasn’t a fan of driving at night, only because the beams from the headlights of other road users tended to give her a headache right behind her eyes that she wouldn’t be able to get rid of until the middle of the next day. But what could she do about it? Not a bloody thing, so there was no point getting herself in a stew about it. She reached for the radio to try and find some decent cheesy music to sing along to, or anything worthwhile to listen to just to help her pass the time until all the cars in front got the fuck out of the way. She fidgeted in her seat and felt a momentary raging urge for a cigarette, even though she had given up fifteen years ago. That normally happened when something was playing on her mind. She knew something was rattling her cage and she knew that she couldn’t get it out of her head no matter how hard she tried to focus on something else or how much she wanted just to go back to her normal and enjoyable everyday life. She had known something wasn’t right with June Dobson, the woman who had put her on track to have her perfect little life, from the moment she had set eyes on her again. Since her first meeting with June, after she had opened her eyes to the bigger picture of everything that had been going wrong with her life, she had been waiting for the day when June would call her back. She knew it was going to happen and she knew that day might be the one that changed
the direction of her life again. Here she was, right now, sitting in this traffic jam and trying to run away from her fate. She knew it wasn’t over and she knew that June had needed more from her than just a lift down to the reservoir. There was something wrong at that reservoir and now there was something wrong with June. She could feel her reaching out to her, trying to connect herself with her own mind. She was trying to fight it, but the realisation that it was impossible to fight her fate and impossible for her to leave June to whatever turmoil she was being subjected to. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt the last of her inner defences go down.

  You got to move it. There isn’t much time.

  It was June’s voice that said it. But it sounded like there was something not right with it. It sounded strained, like she was hanging on by a thread. Some more visions began to bubble up behind her eyes. Uniforms, a young woman, a broken knee and the village covered with rivers of blood, and then there was June herself. She saw June walking towards the centre of the village. Her eyes had rolled over white as if she was no longer piloting the good ship June. There was a steady trail of drool mixed with blood running down the side of her mouth.

  There isn’t much time.

  Francis’s paralysis broke. She slammed the car into gear and began to turn around in the middle of the road. A couple of horns honked and there were a few angry shouts from the others stuck in the queue, but she barely heard them. She managed the manoeuvre in three goes and then she sped away, mildly impressed by the screeching of her tyres as she did so. She had gone from feeling mildly afraid and reluctant to act to feeling strong. She knew what to do and she was going to do it. She owed June and she was going to repay her, no matter what.

  8.

  “How is he doing Nick?” shouted Louis.