by Glen Johnson
I went to turn, to run, but ran straight into the son – it was like hitting a wall. Strong arms wrapped tight around my waist.
I hit him on the head as hard as I could, but to no effect. It was like pummelling a concrete bunker. My breath was forced from my lungs. I was losing consciousness. He was crushing the life from me.
My eyes caught something flashing in the lightning. On the end on the pitchfork – I had forced into the old man – was a hook in the shape of a spiked S. that had held the fork to the wooden beam. With the little strength I had left I reached for it. His eyes bulged with effort, while using his strength to squeeze me tight, trying to make me blackout.
Fuck, he’s strong. I thought people with Down syndrome, or otherwise known as Trisomy 21, because they have an extra twenty-first chromosome, were short in statue. Trust my luck to come across the one person who is an exception to the rule. If it was Down syndrome, it could be a number of different disabilities? I’m no disability specialist. He could have a combination of physical, mental, sensory, emotional, cognitive and developmental problems. There was one thing I know he didn’t have a problem with, and that’s his strength. Why couldn’t he have a degenerative muscle disease.
I pulled the hook from the end of the fork. The old man was still trying to rock back and forth and get to his feet, having given up trying to pull the pitchfork out.
My hand closed around the metal, I unhooked it and swung it up then down with the remainder of my flagging strength.
The sons large round eyes turned at the last moment, seeing what I was about to do. But it was too late. The metal hook struck the top of his head, burying itself almost up to my hand.
I didn’t know if he could feel pain or whether he let go out of instinct to reach for his head. It could have simply been a procedural memory, a response from any residue of the human that was left in the body.
I fell to my knees. Pain shooting through my chest. I knew I had to get away. I scampered along in the mud upon my hands and knees for a few seconds, then climbing back to my feet, and without looking back I ran like the wind towards the tree line. At this stage the only thing keeping me going was the adrenaline washing though my body.
*
“Did he get away?” Smoke trailed out of both nostrils.
“Yes,” the old man wheezed, now that he had three large holes in his chest, through the lungs after the old woman had pulled the pitchfork out.
“Did he think we couldn’t find him crawling around on hands and knees in the dark room? Couldn’t catch him running up the stairs? How easy they forget.” The woman stated while tossing the pitchfork to the side.
“All is going according to plan,” the son announced as some brain matter ran down his face and dripped off his wet chin.
The old woman added. “Good… Good… Soon the harvest will commence full-scale.”
“Yes. And he will soon be ready to accomplish his purpose. The Key will return,” smoker said, flicking the cigarette butt to the ground. “He just needs a little more time.”
28
The Village of the Dead
My lungs burned with fatigue, but I refused to rest. I was running from utter fear for my life. I ran at full pelt for what felt like hours. For all I knew it could’ve been. It felt like I had run the London marathon. I now know how Phidippides felt after the battle for Marathon had been won back in 490 BC with him running the twenty-six miles back to Athens to announce their victory. Of course, he then dropped dead from exhaustion.
I crashed through the trees then across another open field. I was completely disorientated and had no idea where the motorway was.
More trees and bushes whipped at my face, stinging and making small painful cuts. Thorns pulled at my clothing. My legs felt like lead weights, my lungs now wheezing, with pain shooting through my chest. If I didn’t stop then I would drop like a stone.
I slowed down, having no idea how far I had run.
In the distance, no more than thirty meters away, stood an old stone hut. The rain had subsided. The clouds had started to part, letting the moons weak light shine through.
The shelter was empty and half falling down. Three walls still stood, the fourth having collapsed partway into the hut. The roof was sagging towards the fallen wall, but the other three walls were still holding it up. The floor was mud, with leaves and twigs that had blown in by the strong winds. The debris was all pied up against the stonewalls. One old boot sat filled with dried leaves, and a pair of torn well-worn brown trousers. I always wondered how single items ended up in remote places. And why had the person wandered away trouser-less, and with only one shoe? Unless a tramp had been here recently having used it for shelter, and had discarded unwanted items.
The stone hut had no windows, only the open doorway I had entered through. The door had long rotted away. I sat hunched down in one corner, facing the door and tumbled down section of wall. The moons light reflected off the wet stones. Some sections reflected no light, moss having taken hold.
I wondered what the hut was for. Maybe from a time when farmers needed to seek refuge from the wind or rain. No tractors to sit in back when this had been constructed.
I leant back and tried to control my heavy breathing. I just wished this nightmare would be over. Soaked through, aching and confused, my mind closed down and I fell into a deep sleep.
I had no idea what the time was or how long I had slept. I awoke curled up in the dry mud in one corner. Leaves stuck in my hair and stubble. The wind had picked up again and piled all the rubbish up against me, but it had kept me warm during the cold night. And luckily no twisted dreams had haunted my sleep.
My joints protested against trying to move. I sat back against the lumpy stonewall and picked leaves out of my hair. My clothes had partly dried during my troubled rest. For a cheap tacky tracksuit it was holding up well.
Dull grey light filtered down through the broken tiles. It seemed like the ivy – which was wrapped tightly around most of the fallen wall and roof – was the only reason it hadn’t complete collapsed. God knows how long it had been here for.
Or did he? Did god even exist? I was too tired and aching to think about what they had said.
I stood leaning on the twisted doorframe, with drips landing on my head. From my position I could see woods to one side, possibly the ones I had crashed through. Boggy marshes ran off in to the distance to the other side. Hills filled the rest of the scenery. The clouds were low, the tops of the hills disappearing in the white mist. It wasn’t raining, more like the cloud had come down to the ground, now thick misty droplets. It didn’t so much as hit you, rather, you got soaked walking through it.
I was pretty sure I had come through the tangled trees over in the distance, so I continued relentlessly across the boggy ground toward the gap between the two cloud shrouded hills.
As I have already said, having no watch on the time meant nothing, realizing how dependent I had become on having a watch on my wrist or a phone I could turn on. Also I couldn’t see the dull sun because of the mist, so I couldn’t use it to determine the time. Not that I was sure how too. If it was straight up, about half way across the sky, was it midday? But, did that also count during winter?
If only I had paid attention to Ray Mears when he was speaking, during the few times I had watched his television program. I was more a Les Stroud kinda guy. But I hadn’t paid any attention to his survival techniques either; I never thought I would actually need to use any of their Bushcraft information, it was just entertainment. When would I ever be marooned in a forest or tundra, or need to trap fish or tell the time without a watch? Right now, apparently.
It dawned on me that I had my iPhone in my pocket. But even with everything that had happened I still didn’t want to risk turning it on. I wasn’t thinking rationally, I was so tired, emotionally and physically.
Luckily, even after everything from last night, which I was trying to block from my mind, I still had my rucksack strapped tightly to my
back. Money, at least, wasn’t a problem. But what to do now was.
The information I had received last night was ringing through my mind. It came down to aliens and needing death for them to survive. I chastised myself for even believing in the fallen angel story. But his words were so compelling, so believable. And how else was he to explain needing to use corpses as a means of transport.
My clothes were now once again soaking wet. I could feel a cold coming, my joints protesting to being used, even for something simple like walking.
I couldn’t hear any cars. There was obviously no motorway or road nearby. I knew England was quite small, compared to America, and eventually, given a little patience and legwork, I would come across a house or village of some description.
I climbed slowly over the old wooden fence and into a lush green field. The brittle branches scrapped together in the wind, sounding like antlers smacking together. Every now and then a loud crack would resound across the fields and the sound of a branch falling to its resting place.
I was also being repeatedly splashed by accumulated water from off the branches that I shook loose.
Black and white mounds protruded from the hedgerows. I wandered closer, already knowing what I would find. More dead cows. Possibly another farmyard close by.
The morning stretched on, the mist rose, and dark pewter clouds, mixed with splashes of dark green, closed back in. But the rain was yet to come, but promised. A very heavy storm was brewing.
I needed food, a headache once again starting to throb in my temples.
Head down against the wind I continued steadily on.
I looked up to see if the sky was settling down and caught sight of a plume of dirty smoke rising in the distance, bent sharply by the now howling wind.
Wind that was keeping the rain at bay.
I headed in the smokes general directing, dreading the worst. I swear I could also hear the droning of cars coming from the same direction.
I found a road at the end of the field, behind dense hedges. But no cars passing along it. The droning noise was coming from the large factory that the smoke was pouring from – an abattoir.
A car park held possibly twenty-five to thirty cars of all descriptions. But I couldn’t see anyone around the building, not that they would be outside.
I wearily headed for the towering edifice, something not feeling right. I rounded a corner to the loading area, live animals in, and dead animals – skinned and bleed, ready for use – out. Large articulated lorries waited silently in a long row, eight in all. One was backed up against the wide-open rear loading bay doors.
I still hadn’t seen a living soul. No commotion of human activity. Dread was filling my thoughts. And the area stunk. I had never been to an abattoir before, so this might be what death smelt like? The problem with these kinds of places was, they were needed, but no one wanted to see or smell them. They were normally miles away from anywhere. This was the stark truth to our carnivorous cravings.
We simply walk along a supermarket aisle, all the meat prepared and wrapped for our convenience. Small unrecognizable chucks of different animals displayed to whet our appetite. This is where that process starts, before being moved to the local or supermarket butcher to prepare it in its particular cut. I think if most people were taken on a ‘day out’ in an abattoir they would never eat meat again.
I’m an exception. When I was a teenager I worked at a sausage factory. My job was working on the mixing machine. A huge vat with razor blending arms. I use to pour in the water, rusk, different herbs and spices, and then cut open and drop in bags full of animal parts, mainly pig; feet, head and all – ears, snout, cheeks and fatty belly parts. When I turned the nozzle to extract the mix, it would be an unrecognizable mush. And strangely, sausages are still one of my favourite food.
My mind was drifting to the past. I was exhausted physically and mentally.
I headed for one lorry and then understood what the smell was. It was filled with pigs, three levels high. All dead – bloated and laying on their sides. Swollen legs pushed through the slits in the wooden trailer sides. Wide open swollen eyes, glassy and staring blankly at nothing. And of course, once the body was no longer able to control itself, the first thing to go was the sphincter muscle group, one being the anus sphincter; shit was everywhere.
Another four of the trucks had dead animals in. All like the animals at the farmyard I had escaped from.
I now hoisted myself through the gap between the truck and the factories back door. Once again death was everywhere. Animals had collapsed while being herded down the long ramp of the truck, fallen and died where they had landed. To one side, partly covered by the body of a bloated pig, lay the corpse of a young man. Six more men and one woman were in and around the loading bay.
I wandered the factory, shocked at the magnitude of the dead. Hundreds, if not thousands of animals lay everywhere. Pigs and cows littered the floor, laying in their own filth.
The air smelt putrid and vile. I had my tracksuit pulled all the way up, covering my mouth and nose, using it as a filter to keep the worse of the smell at bay.
Around the areas I walked I saw about twenty human bodies, mixed in with that of the animals. Most on the slaughterhouse floor, where the cutting, bleeding and preparing areas were. But some I found in the office to one side, slumped over their desks or lying on the deep red coloured carpet. It was an odd colour choice; it looked like it was saturated with blood. Maybe it was in case someone had to enter from the main ‘killing floor’ and it was to hide bloody footprints?
A vastly obese woman was laid spread eagle on her back, chubby arms akimbo at her sides. She had been dead for more than six hours, because of her blood pooling, a process called hypostasis or most commonly known as livor mortis, when the blood has stopped flowing and rests at the lowest point of the body. The skin had turn vivid pinky-red a couple inches up her arms and neck.
She must have been trying to take some file from the cabinet, because the drawer was still open with sheets of paper scattered all around her. She had died while sucking on a lolly, the white stick still sticking out her blue-lipped mouth. Her hair still held its shape, even though she lay on the floor. She had a big old-fashioned sixties style beehive haircut, as if she belonged in the 1988 movie Hairspray. It must have taken her hours to comb it in to place every morning, and must have needed a least a tin of hair spray a day to keep up. Beside her was a purse, its contents spewed across the red carpet. I grabbed her car keys and headed to the car park.
The key had a Volkswagen keyring so I obviously presumed her car was a Volkswagen of some kind. But after trying all the Volkswagens – two Golf’s, a new style Beetle and a Passat, I started trying the other cars. It turned out she owned an old white rusty Ford Fiesta. The keyring was possibly one item on her long wish list.
I now drove along the road that joined the factory to the outside world. I had no idea where it would come out.
The car smelt of stale cigarette smoke and sickly sweet, possibly from the four different Little Trees air-fresheners that were swinging from the rear view mirror. Rubbish littered the left hand side footwell; many crisp packets and sweet wrappers. Ironically all the crumpled cans were of diet coke. Even after everything she had eaten she still believed diet soda would in someway help her. Sadly a photo perched behind the steering wheel, slightly blocking the Speedo, it was a picture of two small twins, about two years old. The two little girls were dressed in violently pink woollen dresses.
The road ended up leading to a small village. I didn’t notice a sign on the way in, possibly because it was the only road leading off in that particular direction and that road only led to the factory and no further.
I received a far greater shock in the small village.
It looked like a battleground, as if a chemical weapon had been dispersed. Bodies lay everywhere, as if a child had been playing with toy plastic soldiers and had knocked them all flying.
It reminded me of photos I h
ad seen of the horrendous Halabja massacre, which took place on March 16th 1988, during the last days of the Iran/Iraq War by Iraqi government forces in the Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan. It had been ordered by the late Saddam Hussein. It was reported up to 5,000 people were killed and injured up to 10,000 more. It was classed as an act of genocide. Karma and a rope sorted that dictator out.
I looked around, the sense was very similar.
A man lay dead on the pavement, his small Scottie dog dead alongside him. A woman with a small child crumpled beside a red postbox. The small girl was still clutching the soggy letter, ready to be posted in her little white gloved hand. A van was smashed against a low garden wall; the driver slumped over the steering wheel. Another driver hadn’t even made it into his car, the keys were swinging in the door, he lay dead beside the vehicle. A jogger lay face down in an oily puddle. An old woman in her cleaning smock was strewn across the doorstep of her house; the wind was making the door bump against her body.
