The woman, the strength in her body almost sapped, began to head-butt the tendrils. Back and forth. Side to side.
Her face bloodied fast. Her magazine-cover hair caught on the surface of the tendrils. They squirmed against her and she began to rise, worked upon by a kind of upward peristalsis. The abrasion of the tendrils denuded her. Under silent blasts of purple and green she became naked, her torn garments soon left behind on the mucosal surface below her. A brief shower of piss soaked them moments later.
As she rose the flashes became brighter, but I lost sight of her quickly. All I could hear was her voice, weary and mechanical, repeating, “Let me go. Just put me down. Just let me go.”
I saw many other faces in those flashes. People hanging to my left and right. Above and below. All of them watching the woman’s progress. Some of them glistening with her blood and urine. The area where she’d hung moved only slightly, those sections of the tendrils relaxing and releasing, while further up, higher portions of the same tendrils clenched and pulsed.
The flashing ceased. We were left to contemplate what we had witnessed.
That was the first time I thought about finding a way to ‘fall’ – but to struggle only agitated them and to stay still achieved nothing. I let the idea go for the moment. Other things concerned me. I still had no memory of how I’d arrived in the cavern.
It was as I began to try to form a picture of my most recent recollections that the silent lightning overhead began again.
The woman shrieked as though— Hell, I can’t imagine what would cause a person to make that sound. Something she’d seen? Something the tendrils had done to her? I looked up but there was no sign of her. The scream could have come from hundreds of feet above. It was distant, muffled by the trailing anacondas of mobile growth, but the sentiment in her voice resonated from pure terror to pure insanity in a single cry.
“NO!” She screamed that over and over and then, “Oh, fucking JESUS! Oh, Jesus fucking GOD!”
After that her voice seemed to come from behind a membrane, muted and breathless. I could no longer make out the words. It could have been my imagination but I thought her voice trailed off following a series of faraway-sounding crunches and cracks. The silence that followed was dismal. The strobing overhead ceased and we were dipped once more into subterranean inkiness.
I wished for some break in that blackness of anticipation… until I heard the voice of a child, crying at first and then weeping hysterically, somewhere above. The lightning began afresh and twitches echoed through the tendrils that held me. The child – boy or girl, I couldn’t tell – spent its final reserves of strength on a kind of tantrum, as though being persuaded upwards by the tendrils somehow equated with not getting what it wanted. Then the child quieted and the tendrils all around me were still again, no longer transmitting movement from above. The cavern blinded us with soundless explosions of fluorescence for a long time.
After that I wished for nothing but the noiseless, black void. At least then I could forget where I was and try to remember where I’d been.
***
The country roads were deserted but for the abandoned cars and tractors. A haze softened the daylight and a patina of dust dulled the once shiny windscreens and panels of every silent vehicle. It gathered at the back of my throat but I swallowed it rather than spitting in front of Tara.
When their electrical circuits had failed, every vehicle on the road rolled to a standstill. Discovering their mobile phones no longer worked, drivers and passengers had continued their journeys on foot. When night had fallen, a greenish glow persisted, its origin impossible to discern. If not for that unearthly emanation, it would have been the darkest night in many generations. And by its light, small pods of the Stricken stalked and besieged the survivors until morning. Those first few days drew simple lines in people’s thinking: kill or be killed; move by day, hide by night; offend or defend; fight or wait.
Tara and I (well, perhaps it was down to me) decided to wait, and defend only if it became necessary. There were groups we could have joined – people finding or building strongholds and stockpiling supplies – but my instinct was to keep clear of crowds; present as small a target as possible. Tara agreed. Fighting was spirited; it was brave. But the likelihood of Jake being orphaned was far greater and neither of us could face that.
So we stayed in our cottage on the main street of Norton-on-the-Marsh and the world went quiet all around us. Until nightfall.
As we passed between the stalled vehicles or hiked along long stretches of undisturbed road, the hedges silent to either side, it was hard to believe that only two weeks had passed since this had begun. Everything was so quiet, the world might have been deserted for a hundred years.
We cleared a bend in the road and found ourselves on a longish straight. We occupied the lowest point in a verdant, picturesque valley, the kind the Cotswolds are so well known for. I guessed it was about another three miles to the track where we’d turn for Compton Hill and another mile uphill to reach the house. Already, Jake looked tired. Every now and again he’d catch the toe of one of his little boots on the tarmac and then spend the next several paces standing straighter and putting extra care into picking his feet up. He didn’t complain once and that fortitude made me proud and terrified; there was so much more we might be required to endure than a long walk.
I think I did a pretty good job of hiding my emotions, in case Tara looked across at me, but I’ll never know for sure. Up ahead, as we hiked out of that bend and onto the straight, there was a figure in the middle of the road, walking straight towards us.
***
Do I really want to remember all this?
I mean, wouldn’t it be easier not to?
And perhaps this time would be better spent trying to find a way to break free of the tendrils. Isn’t it mere self-indulgence to reminisce? Those images of Tara and Jake are precious now that I’m alone. There’s love in the memories. And hope. My only talismans against the darkness and the ever-present sense of doom. Once I get started, tracing the rails of memory until they bring me into this subterranean limbo, isn’t that going to smash those talismans into worthless fragments?
I don’t have a choice though, really, do I? My instinct is that if I can recall the journey that brought me here, there may be a clue to freedom somewhere among those memories. And there’s the luxury, too, the comfort of taking myself out of this void where I hang and spending a little time with my family.
Loose, wet lumps of faeces patter down past me in the blackness. I feel two droplets hit my cheek and turn away as the stench of it overwhelms me, but I dare not reach up and wipe the offence away. To move is to excite them.
Above me, someone cries soft tears of shame and whispers, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it…” over and over.
But people have been pissing and shitting themselves ever since I regained consciousness. There’s nothing to be done about it. The smell in the cavern is thickening – overripe fruit, degrading vegetables and the waste from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of captives. Pretty soon, I’m going to soil myself – I can’t hold it forever. A distraction would help, of course.
And that decides me.
I’m going to remember it all.
***
The man was armed and dressed in combat camouflage but it was clear he was no soldier. He wore a weighty-looking backpack of olive drab. A rifle muzzle poked up beside it and in his hands he carried a sawn-off shotgun. Another shortened shotgun hung from a holster under his right arm. He wore a stone-coloured bush hat, the brim curled tight on either side and the strap tight under his bearded chin. He didn’t walk so much as swagger.
I stopped and Tara and Jake moved close beside me.
I only hesitated for a moment though. Fear begets fear. “Come on,” I said, “keep walking.”
We moved forward together and when we were close enough I held up a hand to the man and called out.
“All right, mate?”
Th
e most foolish sounding thing that had ever come out of my mouth, but it broke the ice.
“Not bad,” he called back. “All things considered.” We came face to face with him in the road and stopped. I tried to gauge his eyes and demeanour without being too obvious. More glances revealed knives and other weapons draped over or strapped to him. It was clear he wasn’t Stricken but just because I’d never seen the Stricken in the daylight didn’t mean they weren’t out here with us. What dismayed me as I faced him was the suspicion in my own mind, the assumed lack of trust between us. Two weeks was all it had taken. Two weeks and we couldn’t meet another person in broad daylight without considering the worst of them before anything else.
No one seemed to know what else to say.
“You know, you’re going the wrong way,” he said eventually, gesturing over his shoulder. “There’s nothing back there.”
I didn’t want to argue with him and I didn’t want to let on that I knew better.
“So, where are you heading?” I asked. He hesitated for a long time – assessing us, I suppose. I often wondered in the weeks that followed what his criteria were. Usefulness? Combat effectiveness? Friendship? A female to bear the fighters of the future? A child sex slave? Whatever it was, he must have found us worthy. “There’s an airfield northwest of Norton. If there’s any chance of surviving, that’s the place to be.”
“But nothing works,” I said. “You can’t fly out of here.”
“I’m not going up. I’m going down. Underground.”
He grinned as though I ought to know what he meant.
I shrugged.
“I’m sorry, I don’t get it.”
He glanced at each of our faces and for a moment I thought he was just going to keep walking. I got the impression he thought we were too stupid to bother with.
But he didn’t leave.
He said, “There’s a bunker under the airfield. Designed to withstand a nuclear strike and stocked with everything you can imagine – enough to supply hundreds of people for several years.”
I shook my head.
“Airfield? Are you talking about Long Marton?”
“That’s the place.”
I was about to tell him that Long Marton was no airfield. It was barely an airstrip. Something made me hold back but he’d already seen my disbelief.
“Listen,” he said. “If you want to take your family into the hills, that’s your funeral. But I know what I’m doing. The offer’s there. You can take it or leave it.”
He stepped to the side and began to walk past us. “Wait,” I said. “Can’t you just tell me how you discovered this? I mean, the only thing that takes off from Long Marton are microlights and Cessnas. It’s tiny.” He stopped and turned back, grinning just a little.
“That’s the point. It’s not supposed to attract attention.”
“So how do you know about it?”
“I was a fireman. Retired now. But twice over the years we took part in mock-ups of national emergencies. Both times they took us down under the airfield. There’s a disused hangar that conceals the entrance. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. To keep such a place secret… And it’s vast, like a city. Ranks and ranks of trucks and cars in a huge hall are the first thing you see when you go in. Beyond that, there’re blocks of accommodation, command and administration centres, hospitals, schools, weapons caches, training halls, recreation centres, canteens, the lot. It goes on for miles and I don’t think I saw more than a tenth of the place.” He pointed his finger at me.
“So trust me, mate, if you want to make it through this, that’s the place to get to.” He looked at each of us and I sensed pity in his eyes. “If you change your mind – if any of you change your mind – you know what to do.”
He left us standing there and I knew what Tara and Jake were thinking: that man had planted a seed, and from it sprang both doubt and hope. It disempowered our plan and held up an alternative that seemed a hundred times safer and more certain. Walking on towards Compton Hill became physically harder after he’d gone.
I hated him for that, and as the days gathered into weeks, that hatred grew.
***
Three miles on, with Jake struggling to keep up, we turned left off the tarmac country road onto a steep uphill track of compacted stone. Other than the survivalist, we hadn’t seen another human being. There were animals in the fields – sheep and cattle, even a few horses – but I remember thinking, even then, that there was an air of redundancy about them. A few yards up the track, we stopped and I relieved Jake of his rucksack. For a while, he ran ahead, liberated. Rabbits, grazing beneath the ash trees to either side, dashed for their burrows in fright. It could almost have been a Sunday afternoon walk. For a little while, I pretended it was. I put the survivalist and all our nights of hiding in fear out of my mind. I only managed it for a few moments. It was a lie. A dangerous one.
Tara moved in to walk beside me.
“Are we doing the right thing? What if we need help? I mean, there’s no one else out here.” That fucking survivalist twat.
I was silent for a while. I’m always like that when Tara criticises me. Even if I just think she’s criticising me.
Seeds of doubt. Seeds of hope.
That sauntering homage to Rambo had sown them both. Already they’d germinated inside me. “Rob, listen… it’s…”
I walked on, resigning myself to nothing but uncertainty. Why couldn’t she just trust me? Why did she have to find the cracks and slide in the wedges? I don’t think I’d ever truly doubted myself until I met Tara. I assumed it meant I’d found my vulnerability, my most honest self. On our good days, I was stronger than I’d ever been before. On our bad days, I was weaker. Wasn’t that what love did to everyone? Wasn’t that one aspect of what made love so special?
“Hey.”
She tugged on my arm and stopped me. We faced each other on the track. Up ahead, Jake must have sensed something. He turned back to watch us, his seven year-old eyes learning too much about the world, learning it far too late.
“I believe in what you’re doing, Rob. And I know you’ll do anything to protect us. All I’m saying is that we should keep our options open. I don’t want this to be some kind of… I don’t know, last stand or something. I need to know we’re walking up this road to keep living and not into some trap we can’t get out of.”
“Jesus, Tara. I know all that. But that guy looked kind of unhinged. How can we be sure he was telling the truth? How do we know he hadn’t come up with some crazy fantasy just to keep himself going? I know there is a house at the end of this road because I’ve been in it a dozen times. I know it’s safe and I know it’s out of the way.” I gestured across the fields, in the direction we’d come from. “This airfield, this bunker – if it even exists – how do we know whoever’s down there will even let us in? They could be Stricken already, just waiting for more victims to come looking for a place to hide. We have to act on what we know, don’t we? Not just some rumour.”
I watched her eyes. It did hit home but it took time. Tara was getting boxed in by the circumstances. She needed somewhere to go in her mind – another possibility, some mental freedom. Christ, so did I, and that was before we’d even stepped over the threshold of our new refuge.
She nodded eventually but I could see the reluctance that almost prevented her. She turned away and kept walking. Jake turned and sprinted up the hill too, released from the pull of the moment.
“Don’t go too far, Jakey-boy!” I shouted. “Always stay where we can see you.”
He didn’t reply.
“Okay?”
“Don’t call me Jakey-boy, Dad. It’s Jake.”
He kept running and disappeared between two farm outbuildings standing on both sides of the track.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered.
And I hurried after him, leaving Tara behind.
***
A shiver ripples the tendrils and in the darkness there are a thousand sudd
en intakes of breath.
I’ve been dozing again. Dreaming of Tara and Jake.
The jolt of coming to is such that I’ve squirted a dribble of urine into my underwear. It cools fast. My bladder really hurts now. There’s nothing else to be done. I let it go.
Ha!
Easier said than done. I haven’t pissed my pants since I was three years old and it’s a hard habit to break. I’m beginning to think maybe there’s something wrong inside and that’s why I can’t go, but then the flow begins and I piss for what seems like minutes, the jet strengthening as everything releases. Muttered curses rise from somewhere below but there’s no sense in apologising. When I’m done both legs are soaked and the smell is bad. Like I’ve leaked fear in liquid form. The steamy heat is soon replaced by a clinging cold.
If I could move around and get warmed up, maybe the piss would evaporate a bit. Instead, the skin of my legs chills and then the cold moves deep; into the muscles, stiffening them.
I try to think back to that day, walking up the track to Compton House, but I can’t concentrate. Or maybe I just don’t want to. The inside of my right thigh shudders and I look down instinctively, even though I can’t see. At first I think there’s something touching me. I move my hand slowly to my leg so as not to disturb the slumbering tendrils. There’s nothing on the damp material of my jeans but beneath it there is movement. The muscle contracts beneath my fingers, out of my control. The inside of my thigh solidifies to iron and a cry rises in my throat. Cramp ratchets the muscle between my groin and the inside of my knee. I close my mouth but a mewl of agony escapes through my nostrils.
The tendrils sway and ripple around me.
God, not this. Not now.
I dig my fingers into the inside of my thigh but it’s like trying to knead stone. The muscle fibres contract so completely I fear the ligaments will tear away from my bones and leave me hobbled. I don’t scream but I can’t prevent my breath from hissing in and out in harsh snatches. I grind my teeth and try not to move. For a while I manage it. In my mind all I can do is pray.
The Veil (Testaments I and II) Page 9
