Garbage Man

by Joseph D'lacey

  ‘That’s my point, Jimmy, we’re not thinking that way any more. I’d have thought the owner of this shop is probably dead by now. Either that or trying to escape. I don’t think he’ll miss a few items.’

  ‘I’m not going to be drawn into criminal activities.’ Ray and Delilah exchanged a glance.

  ‘What?’ said Jimmy.

  ‘If you don’t stop living by the rules, you’re going to stop living. At least find something better than that stupid bloody steak knife.’

  Jimmy saw the penknife display - all the items locked behind glass - and had a close look. He put the steak knife down and, for the first time since he’d escaped from his bedsit, Ray saw the kid smile.

  ‘You might want something a bit . . . bigger . . . than a Swiss army knife,’ said Ray. ‘You know, so you can stay out of reach.’

  Jimmy looked disappointed and wandered away towards the darker part of the shop.

  ‘Alright. Don’t listen to me, just take whatever you think you can use.’

  ***

  Aggie comes round to the screech of a disk cutter chewing through steel panelling. She smells the scorched rubber, engine oil and petrol.

  There’s been an accident. Yes.

  They were running away but they’d made it. They were free.

  Images queue up in the wrong order.

  The firemen are cutting someone out of the car. Her father or . . .

  Please, God, no. Not Mum. Let them be alright. Let them be alive.

  She can’t understand why she suddenly cares about them. They are the most precious things in the world to her. She’s weeping, realising what a stupid, deluded bitch she’s been. She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t need them to be hurt for her to admit to herself she loves them. Through the rising haze of her own pain, she resolves to be a better, more loving daughter.

  Oh, God, please don’t let them be dead. Please, please, no.

  Wait, Aggie. Think. Don’t be stupid. They cut people out because they’re still alive.

  Yes. Yes. They’re alive. They’re both alive.

  She tries to call out but there’s no breath in her. Feels like someone’s forced a lead football right through her guts. Can’t breathe. The world shrinks again.

  That’s when she notices she’s not in the car any more. On her back. In the grass. Indifferent sky far above. Vision contracting as she suffocates.

  Suddenly something releases inside and she draws in a huge breath.

  It hurts very much but the sky expands again.

  She is not dying.

  ‘Mum?’

  It’s a whisper.

  ‘Mum? Dad?’

  The steel disc ceases to whine. Metal is wrenched apart. The firemen are setting her parents free from the wreckage.

  The paramedics will help them.

  She turns her head towards the sounds. Just a glimpse of them will be enough until the paramedics come to attend to her. A vision to keep her going through the pain. Strength transmitted by the sight of her begetters.

  She sees no emergency service personnel. Only two monsters, each half the size of the car. One towers over her father. The other over her mother. She can’t tell if her parents are alive. Neither of them is moving but they appear to be uninjured by the impact. Her instinct is to scream. She overrides it.

  Tools and instruments open from the aberrant bodies of the creatures. Facsimiles of hands - too many hands - arrange the adults with finicky precision. On their backs, to attention, like sleeping guardsmen. Faster than Aggie’s eyes can follow, blades split her parents’ clothes open and mechanical fingers sweep them away. She is embarrassed to see them this way. Then embarrassed for them. Now nauseous with anticipation of what may follow. This would be the time either to save them or run away. She tests her body’s ability to move. Hands and ankles move but she winces; everything works, everything hurts. Worst of all is the pain in her chest and solar plexus. Something there is adrift, grinding against itself. She uses her arms to push herself up and the pain makes her vomit into her own lap. She keeps the spasms as quiet as she can, squeegees away mucus from her chin with her fingers and wipes them in the grass. The monsters don’t seem to have noticed her. They’re busy about their work.

  She has to make her assessment and act.

  The creature thieving from her mother has some kind of reel inside it. This wheel ratchets and clicks several times a second. It’s spooling something into itself. A slippery rope of pale pasta, dripping blood and fluid, an impossible rainbow of blue and pink. Her mother’s abdomen is emptying fast. Aggie’s mother is conscious now, violated and indignant. Entering wide-eyed shock but not yet death. The reeling stops with a tug that lifts Pamela Smithfield partially off the ground. Secateurs snip and she drops again, her stomach flatter than a supermodel’s.

  The creature operating on her father is holding up his penis and testicles - three wrinkly nubs of skin. The ‘hand’ holding them disappears downwards towards the creature’s middle and Aggie loses sight of it. The emasculation has roused her father from unconsciousness. He screams now, not a howl exactly. Something hoarse and torn from deep within him. Aggie doesn’t recognise his voice in the sound. Richard Smithfield keeps screaming as though that alone will be enough to set him free. The creature doesn’t seem to hear. Maybe it can’t hear, she thinks. Systematically, it dismembers her father, like a kid pulling apart a model aeroplane, prising open the plastic panels, overcoming the glue and snap-jointing. And all the time her father screams his unrecognisable protest.

  Aggie has one option left.

  Behind her, is a small coppice of recently planted pines. It’s nearer than the road. The road equals suicide.

  She rolls onto her hands and knees and in her chest, something separates. This time she can’t prevent the scream. Neither does she have much breath for it. A yelp instead. She can’t crawl, not grating her insides this way with every movement. So she stands up and the pain eases just a little. The creatures have seen her but they aren’t following. Not yet. She falls towards the coppice, each footstep merely preventing her from going down on her knees again.

  She makes it to the trees. They reach a foot or two above her head. She risks a look back. The two scrap monsters are still committing surgical larceny on the bodies of her parents. But they’ve seen her through swimming goggle eyes, through lead crystal tumbler eyes. She knows she has to make the distance while they’re still busy.

  She pushes through the rows of pines, trying to protect her chest from the branches. A couple of dozen paces bring her to the other side of the trees. She staggers into the open. She’s in a field. On the far side of it there’s a five-barred gate. Her choice is made. Every step sends lightning through her sternum. Breathing is getting harder. Straps tighten around her chest. But she’s moving regardless, putting one foot in front of the other, making headway.

  Near the gate, the earth is churned by huge tyre tracks, now dried into deep ruts. Twice she stumbles. Twice she stops herself from hitting the deck. She knows that if she goes down, she may not get up again. The gate is held closed with orange baling twine, easy to undo. But hauling the gate open prises something open in her chest and her vision mists over for a few seconds.

  She hears snapping from across the field and looks back. As her gaze clears she sees the body-thieves smash out of the coppice. She does not understand what they are. How they move, what they are doing; none of it makes sense. She doesn’t try to shut the gate with the twine.

  She’s on a farm track. One way will lead to the farm she assumes, the other back to the road. She hopes she’s picked the right direction.

  The farm track curves one way and another. It meanders through the fields. Aggie realises now that she may not make it. She may become another living organ donor for these creatures that have erupted like a plague from the landfill.
She’s doing what she can - not running but walking fast - and that’s all she’s capable of. She doesn’t even know if she’s going in the right direction. It’s all up to someone else now. She’s given it her best shot.

  The farm track is made of pounded stone. First she hears the rending of the timber in the gate - sounds like the creatures didn’t bother to open it. Then she hears crazy footsteps on the stone still some way behind her. It sounds like a crowd chasing her in every kind of shoe - clogs, hobnail boots, flip-flops and brothel-creepers. Despite believing she’s trying harder then ever, Aggie realises that she is no longer walking fast. She has nothing left to give to her escape. Now she is just walking.

  Now she is plodding.

  Up ahead is the road. The main road her father was driving on. She can make it that far before they catch her, she thinks. Her mind tells her it doesn’t really matter whether they catch her here or out on the road. Her instinct tells her it is better to flee, to stay alive as long as possible. Suddenly, there’s a little more power in her steps, a small reserve of magical energy to keep her moving. She walks faster, almost jogs, ignores the pain because nothing matters now except escape. There will be pain no matter what happens.

  She reaches the road and turns onto it away from Shreve. The road is flat and hard and easier on the legs. She breaks into an agonised trot, almost believing there’s a chance now. Almost seeing herself in some kind of future. Any kind. She forces the thoughts away.

  Up ahead there’s a road sign. Distance to a couple of nearby villages, distance to the motorway. Beyond that is a brown sign with the name of the neighbouring county in white. She’s almost out of Shreve.

  She can’t look back at the monsters because it would waste energy and slow her down. Anyway, she can hear them, clattering faster than before now, abusing the tarmac with their stolen, mutant limbs. She passes the road sign running with everything she has left. She passes the county border and keeps moving.

  The pain in her chest is unbearable now, breathing is becoming impossible. Her steps slow from a run to a trot and from there to a walk and the Earth itself seems to suck the very life from her.

  She stops, utterly spent.

  She turns to face her pursuers.

  There on the border of the county, twenty yards away, they’ve halted. They’re not moving at all. Not breathing or panting though they should be. They watch her through their crude eyes for a long time.

  Then they turn away, back to Shreve.

  ***

  Delilah found a rack of ice axes and picked a matching pair which she tucked into her belt. Ray handed her a full backpack and she slipped it on. He pulled his own on and then looked around.

  ‘Where’s Jimmy?’

  ‘He was over there a second ago.’

  ‘Jimmy? You there? We’re leaving.’

  Some shuffling came from the back of the shop.

  ‘He must be in the stock room,’ said Delilah.

  Ray walked after him and into the almost dark back room. He had to switch on a torch to see properly. Boxes were stacked to well above head height but a path led through them. Beyond his line of sight, Ray could hear movement. Something about the sound made him draw his katana. It emerged with a whisper. With the torch in his left hand the sword was a lot heavier and felt far less useful. If he wanted to see what was in there, though, he had no choice but to use both items.

  As he neared the first right-angle bend in the corridor of stock boxes, he heard the sounds from beyond more clearly. If the lights hadn’t have been off, if he hadn’t learned in the last few hours that nothing was how it seemed any more, he’d have sworn there was someone working back there. Not trying to keep quiet at all but bashing and clattering around. Someone constructing something.

  Ray relaxed a little. It was the kid, weird as ever. He’d found a box with something useful in it and he was putting it together.

  ‘Hey, Jimmy, when we call you, you’ve got to answer. Don’t just fucking ignore us. We’re meant to be sticking together. Trying to stay alive. Jimmy. Jimmy?’

  Ray looked back at Delilah.

  ‘We should never have brought him with us, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  Ray rounded the first corner and shone the torch. Nothing there but more stacked boxes. The noise was coming from further back. Maybe Jimmy wasn’t in here, after all. Maybe someone had left a machine running back here in their haste to get away. He could see light up ahead. There must have been a small window letting a little glimmer in from an alley or car park behind the shop. A little further with the torch and then he’d be able to see. He took the last few steps, aware of Delilah right behind him, and turned the final corner in the maze of boxes.

  It wasn’t someone constructing something. It was something deconstructing someone.

  Jimmy was dead and they’d never even heard him scream.

  Maybe that was because the thing that killed him had one limb stuffed into Jimmy’s mouth. His jaws were stretched so wide that his cheeks had ripped open from the corners of his mouth to his back teeth. The limb was pulsing as it searched around inside Jimmy’s body like a kid rummaging for the prize in a bran tub. Kev could see the movement inside Jimmy shirt as the limb ferreted for what it needed. Then there was a contraction along the whole limb and a slurping sound. The creature’s limb was some kind of industrial vacuum cleaner attachment or the pipe from a large water pump. Something slipped along inside this hollow limb making it bulge. Ray thought of anacondas eating wild pigs.

  The other limbs were busy cutting Jimmy’s body into useful pieces and attaching them to itself. Then Ray realised it wasn’t one landfill creature he was looking at but three. They were working together melding flesh and waste with the tools they had amongst them. Bones were attached to steel frames, plastic and skin were clamped or stapled together, veins and tubing were welded with a festering ichor that blurred the distinction between flesh and inanimate material.

  The creatures made Jimmy fall apart. They made him disappear.

  Then, right there in the torchlight, the three of them made themselves one. In an act of reverse fission, the three became a huge junkyard amoeba. The newly-fused thing rose up, delighting in its new frame and extra mobility; humanoid in shape but with extra appendages no man would ever wish for. The fat, flexible hose that had been thrust inside Jimmy stretched towards Ray like an exploratory trunk. He backed away and the creature advanced. It was fast, more agile than any of the others they’d seen.

  Ray heard Delilah run back to the shop but he didn’t dare turn away. He walked backwards, torch shining right at the creature, reflecting on a film of fresh blood and oily effluent. He kept his katana stretched towards it, though his right hand was now aching from holding the sword unassisted for so long. His back came to rest against a wall of boxes and he adjusted. One more corner to negotiate and he’d be within reach of the stock room door. It was tempting to make a slash or stab at the thing but he didn’t trust himself to make a decent job of it with only one hand. On top of that, the creature moved with a fluidity and grace that scared him. He had a terrible feeling that it could overpower him the moment it decided to lunge.

  He backed around the final corner and this last corridor of boxes was light again. Still he didn’t turn the torch off, just shone it into the compasses the thing was using for eyes. The needles inside them spun and flashed, reflecting the beam. Delilah’s hand reassured him as he backed to the doorway. He stopped. Surprised, the creature stopped too.

  Then Ray dived through the door and let Delilah slam it shut.

  Before it closed and she could lock or block it, the creature slipped a couple of limbs between the door and the frame, pushing it open.

  ‘Shit, Ray.’

  ‘I know.’

  Ray launched himself back at the door but both their shoulders were doing
little to deter the creature. It was forcing its way out.

  ‘We’ve got to run, D.’ She nodded.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted.

  She made straight for the front door of the shop. Ray kept his shoulder wedged against the stock room door but he was slowly being pushed backwards. Delilah was fumbling to open the lock and still hadn’t succeeded when Ray decided to give up and run for it. He pulled down every rack of goods that was loose as he made for the door. Behind him, outdoor products scattered across the floor along with their toppled display units. He turned and threw the torch at the creature, amazed when it ducked to avoid the impact. He reached Delilah, pushed her out of the way and flicked the lock in a single turn. He hauled the door open. She darted out.

  He followed her and together they dragged down the steel shutters. Bizarre limbs appeared between the shutters and the pavement. Ray and Delilah looked at each other.

  ‘Run,’ he said. ‘And don’t look back. I’ll be right behind you.’

  She kissed him and sprinted away.

  Things reached for his ankles and he let go of the shutters. Already other creatures in the street had seen him and were coming his way. A few yards away and making good speed, Delilah was drawing attention of her own. Ray limped after her, through the park gates and across the well-kept lawns. Leaves had fallen since the last raking, so the grass was a tapestry of ochre and chestnut over green. The trees were almost naked and ready for their long months of sleep. Ray wanted to see the spring more than anything else he’d ever wished for. He paid his screaming, leaden leg muscles no mind, fought against the threatening pain in his ankle and, still holding the flashing katana in his right hand, he gained on Delilah.

  ***

  They moved as a huge mass with a space at their centre, a space like the eye of a storm, and in that space, walked Mason Brand, untouched and unharmed. They took him to the landfill, a place he’d seen from a distance every day, a place he’d touched with his bare skin on so many nights.

  The stench from the army of creatures around him was so strong he didn’t notice the smell of the landfill when they reached it. What he noticed was how the level of rubbish in every part of the site was now sunken far below the lips of the vast pits dug to enclose it. The whole site, acres and acres of it, in canyons hundreds of feet deep, had been stirred up. The areas already buried under compacted topsoil had become active, the earth becoming mixed in with the crushed waste below. Huge manmade trenches extended away in many directions from the main pit of what had once been one of the deepest and broadest coal mines in the country. The army of creatures encouraged him to the very edge of the largest trash-filled chasm, parted and retreated preventing him from backing away.