Throwback

by Guy N Smith

  He threw up, couldn't stop himself, spewing half-digested canned stew across the room. Her entire skin was festered, soft red blotches bulging with some kind of vile poison, visibly eating up the flesh, pulsing with its own venom, Instant putrefaction, malignant cancers gone crazy, fighting one another to devour the flesh on the bones!

  Westcote gave a half-scream when he noticed the male, thought at first that the other still lived. The man's frame was rigid as though rigor mortis had claimed him and yet not killed him. Oh Jesus Christ Almighty, that face, that head! Possibly the skull had become engorged, it might have been an optical illusion by the way the top pulsed, visibly throbbing, a football being alternately inflated and deflated by a faulty foot-pump. The skin stretched almost to bursting point, retracted. Expand . . . retract ... expand . . . retract . . . expand . . .

  Morbid fascination, horrific amazement, spew trickling down the lab man's chin and staining his white overalls. The prisoner's features were a fixed snarl that depicted the ultimate in pain and terror, a scream that went on and on so that you still heard it even though it was long finished. The eyes had bloated, burst, the dead sockets streaming white fluid like thick sour milk that was about to solidify into cheese; dilated nostrils discharging twin rivulets of mucus that still flowed fast.

  Still screaming, the dead brain rebelling in awful palpitations, a creature that fought against what they had done to it even after life was gone from it.

  Westcote almost fainted, wanted to look away but could not. Hypnotised. You did this to me; look at me, watch me. No!

  Suddenly he was aware that someone else had come into the room, the waft of a white coat passing him, swift footsteps. Keep away, they're not dead yet!

  It was Reitze. Westcote saw the scientist through a haze of revulsion, despised him because he didn't back off and throw up. Kept watching him.

  Reitze pushed his face close to the vibrating skull, studied it intently for a few seconds. Oh God, he touched it, ran his fingers lightly over it in the way a GP might have examined a patient with ague. Felt the pulse, the heart, squeezed the penis and ejected a spurt of deep orange urine. Liquid excreta splattered on to the floor at the same time.

  Then he transferred his attention to the woman, plucked some hair from her head as casually as though he was weeding couch grass from a herbaceous border, pushed the head back. For fuck's sake, Reitze, I don't want to see her face, too! He saw it all right, the expression similar to that of her companion except that the eyes had not burst. They seemed to see, a dead gaze that focused on Reitze. See what you've done to me, you bastard! The jaw clicked open, expelled a groan, a release of trapped wind coming out in one final curse and even from the doorway you smeiled her fetid breath.

  Reitze let the head fall, stepped back and turned towards Westcote. The latter read sheer contempt in his look, his eyes saying, 'You're no use to me if you're going to shit yourself and throw up every lime an experiment goes wrong.'

  It had gone wrong all right. That was something you accepted, didn't get all fired up about because there would be a next time. And a time after that. You lost a lot, you just hoped that somewhere along the line you might win one', the law of averages.

  Watching, waiting. That skull beat was increasing, speeding up, you could see the flesh being stretched to its limit, starting to tear. Splitting!

  Westcote threw up again as he saw the bone beneath the rent skin crack, a jagged gash that heaved up grey and green slime, spat it out as though the tortured body was rejecting it forcibly. And then the cranium vibrations ceased immediately as though somewhere they had been switched off. It was all over. Finis.

  'What . . . went wrong?' Westcote spoke, maybe to see if he stil! had his power of speech, perhaps as an instinctive apology to Reitze because he had given way to his terror. Only Reitze was impassive, immovable; he expected everybody else to be the same.

  'Nothing went wrong.' The same monotone, still staring at the hanging, drooping corpses. 'That was a phase one experiment to find out how the brain and the skin tissue reacted. We found out. Now we're ready for phase two.'

  'Phase . . . two!'

  'We need to discover how these throwbacks will react in extreme cold. They are being driven from the towns into the countryside where there will be sparse shelter. A few weeks and winter will be here. We don't have much time.'

  Westcote swallowed. He'd seen a lot of Reitze's experiments in the past, probably the best man in the States; he knew that the Professor had been under close surveillance in case he defected to the Soviet Union. Not just a talent, a ruthlessness that put him at the top of his field. If somebody or something died as a result of an experiment it wasn't a failure, it was just a step towards the goal he sought. Positive thinking. Inhuman. These two who hung horribly lifeless from the whitewashed wall, they were just 'specimens'. A few weeks ago they had been normal human beings, maybe a professional man, an attractive housewife.

  Now they were mutilated, festered corpses, no use to anybody. Not even a mourner. No dignity.

  'Get these two incinerated and the place cleaned out.' Reitze was scribbling a few hurried pencil notes in his pocket notebook. Then tell Blaby that I shall be requiring one of the deep-freeze compartments for further experiments. He'll have to shift the food out of it to make space. And when that's done we'll see how many degrees below these apes can survive at!'

  Westcote nodded, swallowed, hated himself for not protesting. But it wouldn't have done any good. Like the CND protesters a few years ago, voices in the wilderness that went unheard. When you had worked with Professor Reitze long enough you got to know that you either obeyed or you got your ass kicked right out.

  Reitze was watching the other carefully, guessed what he was thinking. He heard Rankine's words again: These are our people, you know.' Not any fucking more, they aren't!

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  JON QUINN felt autumn in the heavy rainshower. The difference between late summer and the beginning of fall, as suddenly as that. He'd lost track of the days and weeks, regretted not having marked them off on that dog-eared calendar of Jackie's which hung from the knife rack over the working surface in the kitchen. It was too late to start now but he judged that they were well into September. The leaves would start to turn soon.

  That guy was still watching him from the patch of thorn bushes up on that hillside opposite; even if you couldn't actually see him you knew he was there. He had moved well out of range since Jon had fired a barrel of the shotgun in his direction, knew what to expect if he came any closer.

  It was obviously the same fellow who had been mooching about after dark, one of those who had come that night and looted the toolshed. Hell, there were plenty of other places, deserted farms, why did he have to stick around here? Just having him in the vicinity sent little shivers up and down Jon Quinn's back. He couldn't understand it, the bastard wasn't out to steal anything now because he had had the opportunity; he'd been in the buildings again and hadn't taken anything.

  Jon had stopped him for a time, used the electric fence which worked off an old car battery, heard him howl with pain and shock the first night after it was set up. But the battery had run down and he hadn't got another one. So he had taken to padlocking the toolshed but the bugger still came. Maybe he was harmless, just curious, but he was getting on Jon's nerves. No good going up there after him because he was gone the moment you set foot in the field, bounding up towards the forest skyline, hiding out

  there. Still watching you. Well, he'd better keep his distance because Jon never went anywhere without the twelve-bore these days.

  Sylvia had had her trip into the village and she had not pestered him to go anywhere since. The place had been deserted, everybody gone, or perhaps nobody had ever lived there in the first place. It was getting difficult trying to imagine a world where there was any kind of normality. Jon was getting used to it, accepting it now.

  The manual petrol pump at the garage wasn't working. He had given up trying in the
end, decided that he would have to keep his half tank of fuel for emergencies. They had called at the shop, found the door swinging open, and gone inside. The shelves had been raided, bread and cakes taken, cooked meat trodden into the floor, putrefying. The raiders obviously didn't like processed meats but the flies were enjoying a banquet.

  Jon filled the back of the Land Rover with as much canned and packeted foods as he could find, emptied the biscuit rack. Then on down the narrow street to the hardware store. He had to smash his way in, found an abundance of tools, more than enough to replace the ones that he had had stolen. The law of the jungle, steal and steal again. He had often wondered idly what it would be like if law and order broke down; now he knew.

  He thought about taking another vehicle, there were ample cars parked down the street, but he had decided he needed a Land Rover more than anything. Funny how so often you kick yourself for not thinking of something at the time; he could have syphoned some petrol out of one of them. Maybe next time, if they ever went to the village again. Since that day he had not had any reason to use the Land Rover. They were safer on the Hi!!.

  The wild hill-dwellers knew that he and Sylvia were here all right but only that one up on the slope had persistently watched them. Doubtless, a spy. Maybe they thought the electric fence was some kind of magic and were keeping their distance but surely they had cottoned on that it wasn't working any longer. That guy gave him the creeps.

  Jon had a harvest to get in and even though a lot of it would be wasted he decided to occupy his time reaping the rewards of work done during the days before all this happened. The peas they could dry, the potatoes could be stored in the old barn. He made a clamp for parsnips and carrots. The swedes could stop in the ground, he'd lift the remainder towards Christmas to feed the goats on. Christmas? How the hell would you know when it was Christmas?

  Sylvia was co-operating now because she did not have any choice. There was nowhere to go and he was satisfied that she would not take her own life. If there was a type then she certainly wasn't it. She was adapting slowly.

  The calves had vanished one night about a fortnight ago; Jon had found where they had been killed, driven into a corner of the field and probably been clubbed to death. It didn't matter much because he did not have enough fodder to see them through the coming winter, and as he did not eat red meat himself there was no point in slaughtering them. All the same, he felt sorry for them that they had to die so brutally.

  The winter was going to be the big test for all of them, mostly for the throwbacks. If they were going to attack the holding they would do it then when they were short of food and their crude houses were proving inadequate against the blizzards. In the meantime they just lived from day to day, tried not to think about tomorrow. He just wished he knew what had happened to Jackie though.

  He found himself looking up towards the thorn bushes again. There was no sign of that guy and for some reason he felt more uneasy than usual.

  Sylvia had finished her routine chores, put another boiling of beetroot on the Rayburn. Surely there wasn't much point in pickling any more; there was a limit to how much beetroot you could eat even in a time of food shortage. There wasn't and wouldn't be a shortage, though; eating would just become boring. Jesus, what would she give for a meal at a restaurant, served for her and the washing-up done by somebody else afterwards!

  She crossed to the window from where she had a partial view of the smallholding and on up to those steep fields beyond, the rough one dotted with thorn bushes where they had spied that lurking figure day in, day out. He wasn't in view now but she shivered all the same, could almost feel his eyes burning into her.

  Her train of thinking flipped back to Eric. For some reason lately they were much closer, closer than they had ever been. Which had to be a figment of the imagination because they had not seen each other since early summer. And were not likely to see each other again. Ever.

  A feeling of sadness had her searching the hillsides with misted vision, felt a tear trickling slowly down her cheek. Oh Eric, come back, please, I need you. I'm so sorry for everything.

  She couldn't see Jon any longer, he was somewhere up the far end of the holding working on that strip of Jerusalem artichokes. He could bloody well stop there for all she cared, Christ, she couldn't stick this for the rest of her life, chained to the kitchen. Give me a hand with this, give me a lift with that. We'll be glad of it when winter comes. Live for the bloody winter because it's going to be hell. Never mind the summer, winter's on the way. Bang your head on the wall because it'll be lovely when you stop.

  The weather had certainly turned much more showery and Sylvia was keeping the Rayburn in all day. Jon had promised to lug another load of wood soon. (They'd need it because winter was coming.) Raining again, slanting spots on the window; just a shower because she could see a patch of blue sky behind the dark grey cloud formation.

  Eric again. The best times had been the early days before they were married. Her parents had not liked him, they didn't like anybody who might just take advantage of their sixteen-year-old virginal daughter. You take a tip from us. Sylvia, don't get tied up with one boy, have plenty on the go. Safety in numbers. Sure, mother, I'd like plenty of boyfriends. Good girl!

  Sylvia was sixteen and a half when she got pregnant. It had happened at the Jamiesons' twenty-first party, at least that was what she told her parents. True, it might have. She'd named Roy Patterson as the father. Again, it just might have been, and to be fair to him he hadn't cut and run, had stood like a man and owned up to it. Except that the odds were that it was Eric Atkinson who had put her in the family way.

  The Jamiesons had gone away for the weekend which was why the party turned out the way it had. By 10.30 there were couples snogging all over the place from,the conservatory up to the sixth bedroom. Slow smoochy music from the stereo and if you were a boy you grabbed the nearest girl and tried your luck, and if it was out you tried another. Sylvia reckoned Sue Ballon was the first one to get laid because she was always boasting about having it off with somebody and judging by the way she was squealing and giggling it wasn't just one of the lads having a bit of finger on the Chesterfield.

  Anyway, that was none of Sylvia's business and it wasn't long before Roy Patterson was doing his best to have a feel at her under the guise of doing a very slow samba, a new version that you had to be slightly drunk even to contemplate. A circuitous tour of the corridors, up the stairs, and then they found themselves in Jerry Jamieson's bedroom; the bed was empty, still warm, and there was a damp patch on the bottom sheet.

  By this time Sylvia was wanting it very badly, still remembering the loss of her virginity only ten days ago (with Billy Farr) and desperate to relive the experience all over again. Roy was almost too drunk to get aroused properly and she had to give him a helping hand. Then he fumbled and dropped his French letters on the floor and it took him five minutes on his hands and knees with his trousers round his ankles, striking endless matches and threatening to set the pile carpet on fire, before he finally found them.

  She told him not to bother with one, even tried to roll it off him when she got really randy but he was adamant. Damn him! That was why it hadn't been such a good screw, that and the fact that he couldn't keep his hard-on.

  So later, her appetite already whetted, Sylvia had gone in search of another screw, and stumbling about in the darkened house that now resembled a Soho brothel she had found Eric. Good old Ek!

  He had confessed years later that a bird had gone cold on him and he was off to find a nice quiet place to jerk off and sod the birds! Sylvia had taken him upstairs and on the way they had passed a still-drunk Roy who had dropped something else and was striking matches again.

  Eric had thought his luck was in when she told him not to bother using anything, didn't even ask if the time of the month was OK. God, he'd really pounded her that night, managed it twice, and it had been four in the morning when she'd got home. Her mother was up waiting for her. Girls who stop out till
this time end up pregnant before very long! Not with Roy Patterson though. His name threw a better light on the scene; she didn't mention Eric.

  Roy had stood by her but the baby had been adopted so it was really academic. She didn't want to go out with him again, just biding her time to produce Eric out of the conjurer's hat. Come back Eric, I need you.

  Those early days had been really good. They could have kept them going if they had both worked at it. She could see his face now as clearly as though it was only yesterday, that cheeky smile, a quip when you expected a lazy draw!. A good lover, the best she had ever had. Jon Quinn didn't amount to much, he fucked when he was in the mood but mostly he was too tired at nights to do anything other than fall fast asleep the moment he got into bed. Oh, Eric, I wish you were here, we missed out on such a lot. We were damned fools, both of us.

  She saw his face again; she had to look hard to make sure it really was him because he'd grown a beard, his hair was long and matted and his features were much more squat. But it was Eric all right, the old flame of desire lighting up his eyes the way they used to. She closed her eyes. Opened them again.

  He was stilt there, head and squat shoulders framed in the window like a 3-D painting, nose flattened against the glass. That was when she screamed and almost fainted, recoiled against the table, knocked over a jar of beetroot so that it ran blood-red across the scrubbed pine.

  Her mind boomeranged, came back and hit her with stunning force. Realisation, so wonderful and yet so awful. Staring back at an empty window, only half-praying that it had been a trick of the mind; hearing the door click open, thud back against the wall.

  Eric, I need you, but God I'm scared to hell!

  He was in the kitchen. She could hear his stertorous breathing, smell him, a kind of indoor canine odour like a dog that has been curled up on its mat for most of the day. She closed her eyes, wanted to remember him as he had been that night of the Jamiesons' twenty-first party. You don't need to use anything, Eric, I'll be OK. Maybe we could invite Alan round again one evening. Or perhaps we could go look up the Joneses again.