by Guy N Smith
His captors forced him to his feet. He read the malevolence in their expressions, the curiosity as they fingered his clothing, stroked his smooth skin with their rough hands, chattered in low tones. What creature is this with soft flesh and clothes that stifle his body?
The pitchfork remained at Phil's throat, the threat of impalement more real than ever. They pulled his hands behind his back and he felt the roughness of a rope beginning to bind his wrists, pulled tight, thrown around his arms so that they were pinioned to his body. A dog on a leash, being dragged along, prodded from behind with those devilish prongs.
He didn't know where they were taking him, didn't care, wished he had died of radioactive poisoning or anything that would spare him this. Wondering if his parents were amongst this band of barely human beings, claiming their son for their own. No, they wouldn't see him treated this way.
So in due course they arrived at the encampment in the hills, the women streaming out to greet them, gazing in awe at the live prey which their menfolk had brought home from a hunting trip.
Phil's lips were blistered, his throat crying out for water. A blinding thumping headache like wild horses cantering around inside his brain. Now they were all fingering him, ripping at his shirt, tearing it away from his body, pointing in amazement at the hairless flesh beneath.
Oh God, they were shredding his corduroy trousers now. Embarrassment mingled with his terror, his natural inhibitions screaming at him that there were women here. Closing his eyes; if he could have backed away he would have when they began feeling at his flaccid genitals and laughing in that frightening monkey-like whickering, squeezing him so that he was doubled up in agony, the pain stabbing right into his guts.
A grunted command and they fell back. Kuz has demonstrated his prize exhibit and now there was work to be done. Phil Winder opened his eyes, saw the female who was obviously their leader's woman by the way she stood close to him. By any standards she was beautiful, her features still retaining a civilised look about them. Her gaze centred on the prisoner for a second and in her eyes Phil read compassion, pity. If I had my way you would be set free. You have done us no harm. But I dare not speak out.
A guttural snarl from Kuz and those behind Phil began pushing him forward again, digging the points of the pitchfork into his buttocks so that he gasped with pain. It was difficult to walk, the remnants of his trousers having fallen to his ankles and restricting his movements. Yet he had to keep moving for at the slightest hesitation his nearest captor jabbed him again, gave vent to sadistic delight by sucking in his breath and expelling it noisily every time he thrust with the pitchfork.
Through the cluster of buildings, along a hard-trodden track which was these people's main village street, crude stone dwellings constructed of uneven stones giving them an unstable look, the roofs cut tree boughs with heavy boulders preventing the elements from dislodging them. So primitive but none the less effective.
Winder did not see the hole in the ground until he was a yard or two from it, a huge yawning grave with a rickety ladder protruding from it. The sweat on his body went icy cold as those behind him slashed through his bonds. There was no misunderstanding what was expected of him as they shoved him forward. That is your prison, stranger. Go to it!
He was prodded again even as he reached for the ladder, saw down into the hole for the first time. Just a hole, not even squared sides; twenty feet deep at least, soil and rock, nothing else. His hands were numb, he could not grasp the rungs, relying on his feet and his body to maintain his balance. He tried to kick the remnants of his trousers free but they caught, twisted.
That pikle threatened him again. Hurry. For Christ's sake I can't go any faster! Faces peering down at him, grinning. They were enjoying this, every damned one of them; except maybe that pretty girl who looked out of place here.
Suddenly Phil Winder felt himself start to totter, the ragged trouser bottoms tearing at his foothold. Flailing the air with hands that had no feeling, were just starting to tingle painfully.
Toppling backwards; he couldn't check his scream. His body hit the side, seemed to bounce off it, hands scraping the sheer wall, a futile grab for a hold. It was like being in an elevator that had gone out of control, a snapped cable plunging it down the shaft, the walls hurtling by, giving you an optical illusion so that you had the crazy feeling you were shooting back upwards. Dizziness, your guts turning over, any second you would spew them out. Anticipating the awful bone-shattering impact . . .
Then he hit the bottom and for a second everything went black, the wind knocked right out of him so he was gulping to fill his lungs. Groaning, wanting to weep. You bastards! He was aware that the ladder was moving, being pulled up. He almost grabbed for it but they would only have wrenched it from his grasp, maybe stoned him for his defiance. Then the ladder was gone, probably laid on the ground at the top, well beyond his reach.
Sheer terror, his brain a jumble of ideas of what they might do to him. Perhaps they were going to bury him alive, shovel back that mound of soil and rubble. No! Oh Christ, no please!
Or leave him here to starve and die of thirst in the hot sun; day after day growing weaker, willing himself to die but death cruelly eluding him. And if it rained heavily the hole would fill up quickly, the water slow to seep away through the rocky sides. Swimming, treading water until his strength gave out and he drowned.
Maybe they would just stone him to death for sport! Shut up or you'll go mad! He glanced up, saw that they had gone, returned to their chores in the knowledge that he could not escape. He would still be there when they came back, more frightened than when they had left him, He leaned his back against the side, bit his lip as his circulation began to flow again. His shoulder hurt from the fall but he was sure no bones were broken. He was alive, comparatively unhurt except for those damned pitchfork pricks in his back and buttocks, and the lump on his head where they had felled him in the first place. He was lucky. Every minute of life now was a bonus. Or was it? What was the point in going on living in a land of savages, civilised people turned into creatures like those up there? When it came to that you were better off dead.
Suicide occurred to him. If the means had been available he would have gone through with it. But they weren't. Not even a shard of rock sharp enough to slash his wrists. He had no choice except to live and his life-span would be determined by his captors.
He thought about his parents again. Could it be that they were amongst the throng which had imprisoned him in this hellhole? Surely not. Father, Mother, don't you recognise your own son? It was doubtful if they would.
Irony that brought a cracked mirthless laugh from his blistered lips. He had survived the holocaust because he had taken refuge in a deep hole, and as a result he was now cast into another one. If he had been above ground at the time then he would now be one of them. Holy Mother!
The evening shadows began to darken the bottom of the pit, Phil Winder's body temperature lowering so that he shivered. It was going to be bloody cold in here tonight.
But it was the thought of tomorrow that worried him most as he gradually slipped into an uneasy doze.
CHAPTER NINE
JON QUINN had not told Sylvia what had happened down at Gwyther's farm. There was nothing to be gained by telling her; the countryside around them seethed with horror. She would find out soon enough what was going on.
'Don't you think you ought to try and contact somebody?' she asked him the next morning, chewed on a spoonful of muesli with obvious disdain. 'I mean, we can't go on living like this week in, week out, can we? There are bound to be others like ourselves somewhere. Why don't we go into the village and fill the Land Rover up from that hand-pump like you suggested?'
Tomorrow.' He avoided her gaze. 'I want to spend today lugging firewood. We're going to need every stick we can find.'
'But just how long do you think we're going to have to stay here?' She dropped her spoon into her bowl. The way you're talking we're going to be here forever!'
'Well?' Sylvia was insistent. 'If you won't do something positive then /will. I'll take the Land Rover myself. And I might not come back!'
You probably wouldn't. He sighed. Damn her, if only Jackie was here instead.
'OK, we'll go to the village tomorrow,' he told her, 'but today I want to get some wood in. Also I want to see if I can round up those nanny goats.'
'Another boring day for me loafing around the house,' she groaned. 'And if I don't get a proper meal soon I'll waste away. I might even die of starvation.'
'Once we've got wood we can cook. I'll maybe shoot a rabbit or something, and I guess we may as well start eating the vegetables. We'll have to risk contamination sometime but personally I think we'll be OK. It's certainly not radioactive fall-out.' We just might end up like old Bill Gwyther instead!
'You haven't told me what happened at Gwyther's farm?' She asked the question pointedly now. Don't lie to me, Jon, because I can tell that something was dreadfully wrong there. You can't hide it from me.
'Much the same as here.' He did his best to meet her gaze. The animals had gone wild, broken out. Old Bill's gone, too, I guess.' He had that; Jon Quinn felt his stomach churn, relived that awful moment when Gwyther's head had exploded like a ripe tomato thrown at a wall. I'll go and make a start on the wood.' He scraped his chair back. Then tomorrow we'll go down to the village.'
She accepted his decision reluctantly and he went outside. Tomorrow they would definitely be going into the village.
He walked across to the tractor, an old Ferguson which had seen better days back in the sixties. Rusted and battered it had given him good service. Today was probably its most important day since it came off the assembly line.
The trailer was hitched, he climbed up into the seat. The engine fired first time, belched thick black oily smoke out of its upright exhaust. He revved the engine, thought about the shotgun in the porch. Maybe he should take it. No, he would not be gone long, he could pick it up for the next trip if necessary. If he went back for it now it might alarm Sylvia still further. She was getting to be a real pain in the arse; there were going to be problems with her shortly. I'm bored. I don't like the food here. I'm lonely. That was the difference between a wife and a mistress. The latter you mostly saw the good side of because you didn't have to live with her, the former was the devil you knew and you could compromise with. Except that he hadn't compromised with Jackie.
There was a lump in his throat as he pulled out of the yard on to the rutted track. Oh God, Jackie, if only you were here. But she wasn't and she wouldn't be returning. That was something he had to face up to.
He headed for that strip of pinewoods where the poultry had been perching. Beyond it was a tract of silver birch, part of the Winders' farm. Scrub that was no good to anybody, not even a useful shelter belt. Winder had told him months ago to help himself to any wood he wanted out of it because he was going to get some contractors in to clear it and plough it. Jon hadn't had time to bother up until today. Now he could have taken wood from anywhere he chose and it wouldn't have mattered a damn but he still thought of it as stealing. Maybe in a few weeks he would have got over that psychological hurdle but for the moment he would cut his firewood legitimately. Live for today because there might be no tomorrow. That was a very strong possibility.
He skirted the tall pines, slowed up and tried to look up into their branches but the dark green foliage was too dense to afford him a proper view. He didn't have time to go and see if the hens were still up in the branches. In a far corner of the adjoining field he spied the nanny goats browsing the hawthorn hedge. Later he would try and catch Rosie, maybe milk her by force if necessary. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be.
The strip of scrub was an untidy two or three acres, silver-birch which had reached their allotted span of a half century, died, rotted, and conceded to the gales. Trunks lay half buried in the bracken; an hour or so with the chainsaw and he would fill the trailer. Two or three trips would last them up until Christmas at least.
He swung round in a half-circle, backed the trailer up as near to the spinney as he could, switched off the engine. He sat there listening. A wood-pigeon was cooing softly in the tall pines, a peaceful summer sound that transcended anything mankind did. A bird that was at peace with the world. Some distance away a carrion crow was calling, magpies answering with their harsh ratchet noises; corvines conversing over what had befallen Man?
Jon climbed down, lifted the chainsaw out of the trailer; so many windblown trees that it was a job to know where to start. Even as he grasped the cord, was about to jerk the saw into life, something caught his eye, made him hesitate. A patch of white showing starkly through the green fronds of bracken, artificiality spoiling the natural scenery.
He almost ignored it. It could have been an empty plastic fertiliser bag blown off Winder's fields (damn the man, he would never understand that he was polluting the environment with his chemicals). Or a discarded bedsheet dumped by selfish Jitterbugs. Or ... he didn't have to go and see, it wasn't even his wood, but he found himself laying down the chainsaw and walking in that direction. A hunch, a very uneasy one.
Realisation came slowly because it took him several seconds to identify the remains of the dead animal. His first thought was that it was a ewe that had wandered in here, got caught up in the briars and died. But the fleece was not woolly enough, the patchy white hairs coarse and strong. A broken neck had twisted the head round at an unnatural angle so that the empty eye sockets watched him. Skeletal, just the hide remaining, the scavengers had done their task well.
Those magpies were still telling the crow all about it, how they had feasted from first light to dusk, and then the foxes had come and taken over; rats, too. Now the meat was all gone.
Long curved horns. Jon tried to tell himself that it was a ram, lied to try and avoid accepting the fact that what was left of the carcass was indisputably goat. Billy goat. Gilbert.'
He wished again that he'd brought the shotgun. Damn it, he's dead, he can't hurt you now. No, but whatever killed him might still be around, lurking in the undergrowth, creeping up on you . . .
He glanced back to where he had left the chainsaw, began edging towards it. A hellish weapon in the right hands. Pull yourself together, Gilbert was probably killed soon after we last saw him, jumped by that dog of Gwyther's in the same way that it killed the calf. It ran before and it'll run again, like a desert jackal. It won't attack a human.
All the same he fetched the saw, kicked it into life and began cutting up a thick trunk, a deafening whine that showered sawdust everywhere. Chainsaws were noisy things, they let all and sundry know exactly where you were . . . and you wouldn't hear if anything crept up on you.
Nervous, working fast, wanting to get the job over and done with. But you're coming back for another load. And a third.
Within an hour the trailer was full of neatly sawn cylindrical birch trunk. He climbed back up to the wheel, started on the bumpy journey back home.
If only Jackie had been there awaiting him.
He was starting to get depressed, a gradual erosion of his positive thinking. That stemmed from spending too much time alone. Maybe Sylvia was right, they had to go and find other survivors, //there were any others. There had to be.
He backed into the yard, tipped the trailer, watched the logs showering out, bumping into a sprawling heap, one or two bowling away as though they sought to escape the splitting axe and the Rayburn. Now it was time to go back to the wood again and . . .
'Jon!' Sylvia appeared in the doorway and his first glance told him that something was wrong. Her features were whiter than usual and she glanced continually about her, 'Jon, there's been somebody here!'
'What! Who?' His mouth went dry
and the sweat inside his T-shirt was suddenly cold. 'What on earth are you talking about?'
'There was somebody here about a quarter of an hour ago.'
'Yes, but who? A man? A woman?'
'I ... I didn't see them.'
He closed his eyes momentarily, almost yelled 'Then how the fuck did you know they were here?' Instead he spoke calmly, knew he had to reassure her. 'How do you know then?'
'I heard them. They went in the shed over there, rummaged around, then came out again and left the door swinging open, just like it is now.'
He turned, saw that she spoke the truth. He knew the door had been closed when he left because he had fetched the chainsaw out of there before breakfast and had replaced the stout gate-hook in the 'eye'. It fitted tight, too tight, so that more often than not you had to jerk it free to open the door. It was beyond anything other than a human being to open it.
The shed was not in full view of the cottage windows, a bare stone wall facing in this direction. Without going outside Sylvia would not have been able to see whoever had been in the shed and . . .
'Christ!' He saw the debris on the floor, the spilled contents of his workbench, boxes of screws, nuts, nails scattered over the whole floor so that they overflowed out into the yard. 'Some bugger's been stealing my tools.'
Jon Quinn had a tidy mind, Jackie used to call him obsessional. If you put everything back where you got it from as soon as you've finished with it, you'll know where to find it next time, he used to tell her. Consequently, within a couple of minutes he knew which of his tools were gone, a process of elimination from those still hanging from the nails above the bench. Two screwdrivers, a hammer, a hacksaw, a chisel. . . The Black and Decker toolset Jackie had given him for Christmas was still there, so was his spare chainsaw. It didn't add up. Or did it?
